The Best Football Movies

There are shockingly few films made on football. But then football is not America’s (or Hollywood’s) favourite sport. We’ve put together a list of the best films on football. Grab a beer, rent out these DVDs and take a break from the World Cup — with more football!

By Abhishek Raghunath

Published: Jul 9, 2010 06:54:50 AM IST

Updated: Jul 9, 2010 03:03:14 PM IST

The Damned United (2009)
Director: Tom Hooper; Cast: Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall
‘Faction’ meets ‘bromance’. The Damned United tells the story of Brian Clough, the best manager the English national team never had. It is based on David Peace’s best-selling novel of the same name (2006). Clough’s widow has criticised this movie saying that many of the events in the movie never happened. She had the same opinion of the book as well. There are a few inaccuracies but nothing that can’t be called creative liberty.

The story is told through a series of flashbacks, at times complex, but not confusing. It tells the story of Derby County and Leeds United manager Clough, who managed to piss off players, officials and management with remarkable consistency thanks to his penchant for putting both feet in his mouth.
Fans loved him for his honesty. The establishment hated it. Michael Sheen pulls off the egomaniacal, stubborn, hubristic Clough with panache. Timothy Spall is Peter Taylor, Clough’s assistant, sweeper-upper and one-time best friend, who falls out with him when he joins the ‘enemy’ (Leeds). They make up later, but only when Clough grovels before him, alone and helpless as he finally grows up to leave the adolescent in him behind.

The movie is less about the football, more about the man. I marvelled at this walking disaster and wondered how he won the League Championship with Derby County. He was axed after completing 44 days at Leeds United. There are some redeeming qualities about Clough and you know this is a man that you can neither hate nor admire. He epitomises the fragility of man, a naivety, a dangerous self-belief. But you can’t shake off the feeling that something is wrong with him.

This movie has all the elements of a good sports movie: Friendship, honour, loyalty, inspiration, pride, grief and finally redemption. That is why it is so watchable.

Shaolin Soccer (2001)
Director: Stephen Chow; Cast: Stephen Chow, Vicki Zhao
Word of advice: Put your brain in cold storage before you watch this movie. Chow mixes football and kung-fu into a bizarre, blow-my-brains-out-with-a-bazooka visual spectacle. He triples up as writer, director and lead actor in this story of a bunch of Shaolin monks who use kung-fu to play football and defeat the archetypical evil conglomerate team.

The plot is insane, the humour is cheap; but trust me, you will fall out of your chair laughing hard. It is not possible to describe the lines in print. You have to watch it to enjoy it.

Sing (Chow) recruits five of his former monk brothers, who have traded their robes for daily 9-5 jobs, to play football under the tutelage of ‘Golden Leg’, a former football star. They are joined by a bunch of roughnecks and there is a sub-plot involving Sing’s love interest. I haven’t seen another movie where the female lead’s face is covered in acne. And she sells street food that she prepares using Tai Chi. The names of the characters are crazy: Golden Leg, Iron Hand, Steel Leg etc. etc. Sing’s football maniacs beat other teams by ridiculous margins, one member from an opposing team laments: “I want to play normal soccer.” Normal soccer? And give up on Sing’s unique brand? No way.

The movie is a tribute to old style kung-fu movies: references to Jackie Chan, a goal sequence that reminds you of Bruce Lee. Then you can see shades of Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns. The Matrix fight sequences morph into football plays. It’s madness, I tell you. Madness!

Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

Director: Gurindher Chadha; Cast: Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley

This movie makes it to the list because it bent all the rules that a traditional Indian girl is supposed to follow. As the tagline says, ‘Who wants to make aloo gobi when you can Bend It Like Beckham?’

It is full of sporting clichés and it is based on Bollywood formula. Chadha reminds you just why formulas work. This story of an Indian girl who would rather play football than become a stay-at-home housewife brought a smile to everyone’s lips in 2002.

Eight years later, it hasn’t lost that ability. The bit between the two grandmothers confusing lesbians and Lebanese still cracks me up. The performances by Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley as partners in crime are delightful, and Anupam Kher puts on a good show as the confused father torn between Indian tradition and letting his daughter live her life. I have met a lot of expat Indians who have grappled with these issues as they were growing up.

Of course, not all the scenes in the movie ring true. Some of them wouldn’t look out of place in a sitcom. But it’s a fairy tale. What sports movie isn’t? Enjoy it.

Image: Siemoneit Ronald / Corbis Sygma

Green Street Hooligans (2005)
Director: Lexi Alexander; Cast: Elijah Wood, Charlie Hunnam
This is a movie about the darker side of the beautiful game. Director Lexi Alexander tries to prove her street cred by making a film on football hooliganism in England. She succeeds.

The movie is based on a simple premise: Football teams play on the pitch, their fans beat the living hell out of each other off it. In the world of the football fan, it doesn’t matter how good your team is. What matters is whether you are ready to put your life on the line, match after match, for the glory of being the toughest ‘firm’ in the country. (A firm being a gang of fans of a particular team.) In this case, the firm in the spotlight is West Ham United’s Green Street Elite, or the GSE.

Elijah Wood — yes, Frodo Baggins from Lord of the Rings — plays an ace journalism student from Harvard, expelled for a drug bust he was forced to take the blame for. He moves to England to be with his sister. He tags along with her brother-in-law (Charlie Hunnam) for his first football match and is introduced to the world of firms. The GSE is the toughest, and if you want to be a part of it you have to prove yourself. That is exactly what Wood does after getting his nose broken. The firm members are not working class stiffs. They include teachers, pilots et al; except cops and journalists.

Wood pulls off the portrayal of an insecure Yank who craves acceptance and is grateful to the point of being fatally loyal when he is allowed into the hallowed inner circle. But the actual star of the movie is Hunnam. As the charismatic, perversely upright leader of the GSE, he makes you root for him.

The fight scenes are refreshing. In this age of computer-generated imagery and special effects, watching hand-to-hand, no-holds barred street fights awaken long buried animal instincts in you. In moments of rage, all of us have fantasised about lashing out at another human being, but have stopped short because we’ve evolved as sentient beings. The GSE have no such qualms.

The Cup (1999)
Director: Khyentse Norbu; Cast: Jamyang Lodro, Orgyen Tobgyal
Norbu is a real life Buddhist monk who learnt film-making from Bernardo Bertolucci when that director created Little Buddha (1994). Five years later, Norbu came out with this charming tale, inspired by a true story, of a young boy who escapes from China-ruled Tibet to find shelter in an exiled Tibetan monastery in India.

The visuals are a treat. The sprawling landscape of the foothills of the Himalayas take your breath away. The film is a sort-of-documentary on the lives of monks with a lot of fun thrown in. It casts actual monks, none of whom had any real acting experience. If you think monks spend all their time in prayer or studies, you’d be wrong. They talk about girls, they are lazy, they are curious about the outside world, and if there is a football World Cup on, all they want to do is watch the games.

That’s what Jamyang Lodro does. As Orgyen, he is the scallywag monk-in-the-making, who will stop at nothing to watch the final match between France and Brazil. Even if it means going against Geko, played by Orgyen Tobgyal, the monk who is in charge of the boys. Orgyen supports France, because it is the only Western country that supports a free Tibet.

The film is witty and passes on a very strong message. Some critics have called it whimsical but when you are driven out of your homeland I think it is okay to escape into fantasy for brief periods. A Coca-Cola can plays an important part in the movie, as does a young boy’s watch.

I won’t spoil it for you but this is a must watch, more so if you can watch it with your kid. You will, together, bond with the monks and learn some life lessons along the way. At the very least, you’ll watch a charming, beautiful film.

Escape to Victory (1981)
Director: John Huston; Cast: Pele,
Osvaldo Ardiles, Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine
Filled with clichés, unrealistic scenes, and a cast of wooden actors, this is the ultimate cult football movie. It is so bad it is good.

We will never see a cast like this again. Pele, Bobby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles, Paul van Himst, John Wark, Russell Osman and other stars of the 1970s all played actual footballers in the movie. Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone brought Hollywood glamour.

The story is straightforward: Allied Prisoners of War play football against a German team. The film is inspired by the true story of Dynamo Kiev’s players, who were captured by the Germans during the war. They played a series of matches against German teams before being sent to prison camps. Most of the players died. In the film however, they escape as the crowd storms the pitch after the match ends in a draw.

The acting is very average. Stallone is funny. The footballers are tolerable. But the football takes your breath away. The players unleash their repertoire of tricks, you root for the underdogs. Some sequences blow your mind. Pele’s fourth goal that equalises the match makes you wonder: If he had this skill at 41, what would he have been like when he was 25?

his is not Oscar-winning material. This is not a film that critics will like. This is not even a film that war story fans will like. But this is a film about football and what’s not to like about that?

Prakash Jha’s Hip Hip Hurray (1983) starring Raj Kiran, Shafi Inamdar and Deepti Naval is supposed to be India’s best take on football. Unfortunately we were unable to get a copy to watch it.

Have we missed your favourite football movie? Tell us about it in the comments on the online version of this article at business.in.com

(This story appears in the 16 July, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)