Football and cinema. What do they have in common? Probably the fact that these are the two most popular, most massive, and most affordable entertainment in the world. Watching a movie is quite simple: you turn it on, you watch it, and sometimes you don’t even have to pay. To play ball, you need much either, neither special height nor a special platform. Here are the top 10 movies about football you should know about.
Movies About Football (Soccer)
1. Green Street Hooligans
Release year: 2005
Country: USA, UK
Genre: Sports, Drama, Crime
Cast: Elijah Wood, Charlie Hunnam, Claire Forlani, and others.
Matt wanted to be a journalist. I studied at Harvard, and everything was fine. But the damned neighbor framed the guy by planting his coke. True, in return for the expelled, the neighbor gives ten thousand dollars. Why not take this tidy sum and rush to my sister in London. Very soon, Matthew meets Pitt, the leader of the West Ham group. Although the group does not accept Matt, since he is not a fan and not even British, nevertheless he is taken to the game. Well, on the way from the stadium, the hero is surrounded by a rival group of Birmingham fans.
2. Pele: Birth of a Legend
Release year: 2016
Country: USA
Genre: Biography, Sports, Drama
Cast: Kevin de Paula, Leonardo Lima Carvalho, Seu Jorge, and others.
Pele is like no other footballer known in the world. He’s like Metallica, like Da Vinci. Not everyone has seen, not everyone has heard, but everyone knows the brand. The path to glory – as it is. Sweat, pain, tears, dirt. A brutal but uplifting story of an ascent. Reality itself, not like cinema, every day reminds people that behind any success story of a person from nowhere there is work and perseverance, the scale of which is difficult to imagine.
3. Bend It Like Beckham
Release year: 2002
Country: USA, UK, Germany
Genre: sports, comedy, melodrama
Cast: Parminder K. Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and others.
Eighteen-year-old Jess moves to London with her family from India. She is so obsessed with football and her idol that after a successful backyard match she always shares her feelings with her adored David, who is looking at her from the posters in the room.
4. The Damned United
Release year: 2009
Country: UK
Genre: sports, drama, biography
Cast: Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Colm Meaney, and others
Michael Sheen plays Brian Clough. Connoisseurs of this sport simply do not have the right not to know this name. This is a rockstar, a real rebel, the most outrageous coach of all time. He could afford to yell obscenities at the players and hit a negligent football player. Clough made extremely eccentric decisions and developed bold strategies for the game.
5. Looking for Eric
Release year: 2009
Country: UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain
Genre: Sports, fantasy, drama
Cast: Steve Evets, Eric Cantona, Stephanie Bishop, and others.
The hero wakes up in the hospital after the accident, of course, he has depression and despair. Fortunately, the hero has excellent friendships – with Manchester United fans. And the idol of the past Cantona footballer, played by Eric Cantona himself, literally comes to him.
6. Headbutt
Release year: 1979
Country: France
Genre: Sports, Drama, Comedy
Cast: Patrick Dever, Frances Duniak, Dorothy Gemma, and others.
At one training session, Perrin deliberately knocks down local football star Berthier for some paltry reason. The whole city begins to hate him, he is fired from his job and forbidden to enter the bar. Despite his character, Francois is a good guy and one night he prevents the girl from being raped, for which he goes to prison by mistake.
7. The Game of Their Lives
Release year: 2005
Country: USA
Genre: Sports, Drama, History
Cast: Gerard Butler, Wes Bentley, Jay Jordan, and others.
Finally, something not about Britain and Europe. The true story of the US team at the 1950 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Adaptation of the book by Geoffrey Douglas. It’s even cooler that the US had a team of non-professionals. These were amateur players who were gathered almost on the streets.
Conclusion
The most popular game on the planet, even more, popular than the movie.
At the same time, football is not much older than cinema. They also developed in parallel, and in many ways, cinema and television contributed to the popularization of this sport.