Escape to Victory thrashes rivals [from Ananova.com, June 20, 2004]

Escape to Victory has been named the greatest football movie of all time.

The 1981 film starred Brazilian football legend Pele, England's 1966 World Cup captain Bobby Moore and actors Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone.

They played allied PoWs preparing for a match against a German team in Nazi-occupied Paris while French Resistance and British officers make plans for the team's escape.

British comedy Bend it Like Beckham, starring Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley, came second in the poll.

The most recent soccer movie Football Factory, about football hooliganism, which was criticised for scenes of explicit violence, came 10th in the UCI Cinema poll with only 1%.

Fever Pitch, based on Nick Hornby's best selling semi-autobiography, came third, followed by When Saturday Comes, the 1996 movie starring Sean Bean and Emily Lloyd, about a hard-drinking brewery worker who has a trial at Sheffield United.

Other films in the top 10 include Cup Fever (1965), in sixth place, starring Manchester United manager Matt Busby.

Mean Machine (2001), which starred Vinnie Jones as a soccer star who leads a match against prison guards after being jailed for assault, came ninth.

UCI Cinemas spokeswoman Lianne Butterfield said: "As a nation we love football and films about our favourite passion have always been popular with cinemagoers.

"Escape to Victory and Bend it Like Beckham are great feel-good films that everyone can enjoy, even if they don't understand the offside rule."

- Craig