Album Of The Week

Various: "Football Classics" (Naxos)

"Here we go: allez, allez, allez . . . " Alas, not even that fetching little samba bit in the middle will be enough to turn Ricky Martin's official World Cup song into one of the unforgettable football anthems of all time. But what are the unforgettable football anthems of all time? Nessun Dorma, you will cry, and rightly so. After that it gets tricky: the others are either forgotten, or unfit for mention in a family newspaper. This double album scores almost immediately thanks to its cheeky subtitle, "classical music that celebrates the great game", with its beguiling suggestion that Handel was commissioned by ITV to write Zadok The Priest as theme music for its coverage of the Champions' League. It's actually a a pot-pourri of amiable and occasionally inspirational pieces whose connection to soccer is more or less tangential. Reasonably kosher are Abide With Me (sung at Cup Finals), Jerusalem (theme music for England's World Cup qualifiers), the Ode To Joy (ditto for the European Championships) and the Dance Of The Knights from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo And Juliet (hauled out periodically to indicate the approach of sinister foreign baddies in European competitions). The second CD contains - wait for it - the national anthems of all 32 competing countries. These sound like the most macho marching bands imaginable crossed with the dodgiest Eurovision entries you've ever heard, but they're all beautifully played by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Breiner; rarely can so many tongues have been in so many cheeks for so long. A masterpiece of kitsch and, at just under a tenner, five times cheaper than a replica jersey.