Three cheers for the 'Spoughties'

No member of this holy trinity involves the game that fixates us most. Domestically, the ultimate victories of cash over tradition and hype over reality saw the Premier League produce only two Champions League wins — a measly return for the Most Mercenary League In The World.

Arsene Wenger's 2003-2004 Invincibles deserve the reverence of history and Cristiano Ronaldo joined the League's deities.

Yet for all the clear advance in technical quality on the pitch and worldwide dominance of the brand, the Premier League impressions the Spoughties leave in their wake are of predictability, avarice and vulgarity . . . of the final table panning out precisely as expected the previous August, of Ashley Cole swerving his Bentley in shock when offered £55,000 a week by Arsenal and of plutocratic foreign owners with a fleet of mega-yachts or alleged human rights violations back in Thailand.

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This was the decade in which English football, at its highest level, ceased to be English in more than name and became a global entertainment hosted here primarily for tax reasons.

Internationally, meanwhile, the game remained in stasis. For England, a decade that began with humiliation under Kevin Keegan in Euro 2000 and stuck to that path under Sven-Goran Eriksson and Steve McClaren ends in hope under the cultured Fabio Capello.

From no country, however, did we see anything new (not that there has been any striking innovation since the Dutch geniuses introduced us to total football in 1974).

The Spoughties will be recalled for no magnificent teams and, with the exception of Zinedine Zidane, no dead certs for inclusion in an all-time greatest squad.

If the headbutt to Marco Materazzi's chest that proved Zizou's final act is the decade's iconic footballing image, it is to a trio of other sports that we turn for glories unlikely ever to be matched, much less surpassed.

Each reduced you to quivering astonishment and left you with the melancholy assumption that you would never see its like again.

First came the 2005 Ashes, when Ricky Ponting's Australians, ageing and off form yet still unquenchably competitive, fought like demons to prevent Michael Vaughan's side regaining the Urn after almost two decades of miserable failure.

No sporting series has generated such intolerable tension or been laden with so many turning points, from the moment Glenn McGrath freakishly injured himself before the start of the Second Test (Greatest Ever Played), to Shane Warne — oh the irony of that after the series he'd had — dropping a dolly at slip just before lunch on the last day at The Oval, allowing Kevin Pietersen to secure the Ashes with Test cricket's most remarkable debut century. The ensuing eruption of national pride dwarfed that generated by the only rival success for English team sport, two years earlier, when Jonny Wilkinson's brilliant drop-kick wiped the smug grin of Australia's face in the dying moments of the rugby union World Cup Final in Sydney.

If England had no direct role in the second of the trinity, it did have the honour of hosting the Wimbledon men's singles final of 2008, the zenith of the rivalry between the two finest male players tennis has yet produced and simply the greatest sport I have ever witnessed.

This five-hour festival of astonishing shot making and mental resilience, of peerless good grace from Roger Federer in heartbreaking defeat and enchanting magnanimity in victory from Rafael Nadal seemed almost a challenge to atheism.

It was so unnaturally perfect that you mused on a benign God pulling the racquet strings, then decreeing that it end seconds before the Centre Court twilight gave way to darkness.

Within weeks, the miracle that is Usain Bolt emerged in Beijing, as fully formed as Athena from Zeus's head. The Jamaican stretched credulity until it begged for mercy in his Olympic 100m semi-final, slowing from halfway and insouciantly glancing to either side more in contemplation of his own genius than to gauge any threat (ha ha).

Leaping from the sofa in sheer disbelief, you knew yourself to be in the presence of raw talent on a unique scale. His world record gold medal run confirmed this and he went on to break Michael Johnson's 200m mark that few expected to be lowered inside 30 years.Within a year he would shatter both again at the world championships in Berlin.

Many other achievements, some inspiring and others dispiriting, took up safety deposit boxes in the memory banks.

Between Steve Redgrave's fifth rowing gold in Sydney when the Spoughties were barely weaned and Formula One's historically repugnant Crashgate conspiracy as they packed their bag for the hospice, we were overjoyed by Kelly Holmes's double Olympic triumph, awed by Manny Pacquiao's gift for boxing and disappointed by Tim Henman's tantalising Grand Slam semi-finals.

We were also both respectful of and slightly bored by the constancy of Phil Taylor's darting supremacy, bewildered by Ronnie O'Sullivan's tortured disdain for his snooker genius, startled by the arrival by helicopter at Lord's of the suspected fraudster Allen Stanford, richly captivated by the activities on- and latterly off-course of Tiger Woods and pushed to the brink of a coronary by Lewis Hamilton's outlandish Formula One Grand Prix world title victory on almost the final bend of the season in rainy Brazil.

But it is to the DVDs of the 2005 Ashes, the 2008 Olympic sprint finals and last year's Wimbledon final that I will never tire of returning and it is thanks to Warnie and Freddie Flintoff, to the Fed and that rampaging Spanish bull Rafa Nadal and to the saviour of athletics Usain Bolt that I regard the Spoughties as undoubtedly the greatest sporting decade of my life, and possibly of all time.

Gallery: The sporting year in pictures