For retail corporations, the football World Cup is a quadrennial opportunity to flog tie-in products: branded drinks, breakfast cereals, video games. The movie business would love to have a slice of the action and at least one film about the sport is usually released ahead of the tournament. For Brazil 2014, it’s Next Goal Wins, a documentary by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison that follows the attempts of American Samoa, the team that suffered the record 31-0 defeat against Australia in 2001, to qualify for this year’s contest.
In football movies, though, one kind of defeat is almost always guaranteed. Goal! – a trilogy about a fictional player that was released either side of the 2006 World Cup – was so unsuccessful that it had been relegated to a DVD-only release by the third instalment. The main reason that this sport has struggled to spawn cinematic classics is that the potential market is fragmented and partisan. While most of the globe can identify with James Bond or Buzz Lightyear, a majority of women – and of Americans – remain indifferent to men kicking balls. A further difficulty: even after months in the gym, an Equity member won’t look plausibly like a football star. Michael Sheen is tremendous as Brian Clough in The Damned United (2009) but the actors playing the manager’s Leeds United players look as if they’d struggle to beat a bunch of nuns.
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