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Films about football


StevieH

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inspired by a mention in another thread. namecheck films about football that are actually worth watching. this means that 'when saturday comes' and that shocking marketing campaign 'goal!' don't count.

'escape to victory' goes without saying. even though that pillock stallone thought he could become a goalkeeper without having to do any practice and when offered coaching by one gordon banks said he didn't need it.

'zidane - a 21st century portrait' - thing of beauty this with a brilliant mogwai soundtrack.

'les yeux dans les bleus' - fly on the wall documentary following france through the '98 world cup. absolutely fascinating and you see didier deschamps give one of the great captain performances in the half-time dressing room scene. this one it does help if you speak french like. though there must be a subtitled version out there somewhere.

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Funnily enough this just popped up on the sites of which we cannot speak.

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In 2001, the tiny Pacific island of American Samoa suffered a world record 31-0 defeat at the hands of Australia, garnering headlines across the world as the worst
soccer team on the planet. A decade after that humiliating night, they remain rooted to the bottom of FIFA's World rankings, having scored only twice in seventeen
years. They have lost every competitive game they have ever played. Against this backdrop of serial underachievement, the team face the daunting prospect of a
qualification campaign for the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil. It would take a miracle-maker or a madman to turn the team's fortunes around - and in maverick
Dutch coach Thomas Rongen the islanders somehow find both. As a loan appointment from the mighty U.S. Soccer Federation, with experience of playing alongside
football greats like George Best and Johann Cruyff, Rongen is completely unprepared for what greets him on the island - in his own words it is "by far the lowest
standard" of football he's ever ...

(He's obviously never been to White Hart Lane).

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I was going to mention the Arsenal Stadium one.. Rubbish detective story, but great to see football from another era.

A couple of good football films about other codes are This Sporting Life, an old film about rugby league, and The Club, about an Australian rules team.

Films to avoid are anything glorifying the off field hard man <deleted> that brought the game (and my club in particular) into disrepute in the past.

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The Four Year Plan, a documentary feature about the takeover of QPR by Silvio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone and others. Absolutely brilliant. Briatore is a scream; phoning the bench from the director's box to instruct the coach about substitutions and tactics and going through managers like a dose of salts: Jim Magilton, Rui Costa, Ian Dowie. Love him or loathe him, Neil Warnock is the eventual star of the show. He is a class apart and you can see why he is always in demand. I don't know how to access this - Amazon or whatnot, I presume. Well worth it, if you can see it.

Also, I recently saw a BBC documentary about the coach of the newly formed South Sudan team. He was from one of the former Yugoslavian states and the passion he shows for the game and his team is truly moving.

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"The Damned United". Martin Sheen as Cloughie - about the 44 days he and Taylor spent at Leeds United. One of the few football films to be given 4 tomatoes on Rotten Tomatoes* (largely because Sheen as absolutely excellent in almost everything he touches (like when he played Blair in the Diana death film)

*Gregory's Girl did get 4.5 mind!

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