Content Starts Here
Goal film review
GOAL!
Running time: 118 mins
Starring: Nuno Becker, Stephen Dillane, Alessandro Nivola, David Beckham, Alan Shearer
The battle for the title of worst football film of all time has always been a hotly-contested one, with the 1996 Sean Bean vehicle When Saturday Comes just about retaining its position at the top of the tree. It now has a new rival in Goal!, a lamentable effort which is sponsored by FIFA and bears all the hallmarks of ideas created in a warm and fuzzy marketing meeting at football's HQ. The first of a proposed trilogy, Goal! has more comedic value than anything else, and football fans over the age of six are likely to roll their eyes in disbelief at the events portrayed on screen.
Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (whose impressive line of credits includes The Likely Lads), Goal! follows the story of Santiago Munez (Nuno Becker), a Mexican teenager living illegally in the US. Santiago cuts a swathe on the soccer pitch and is one day spotted by Glen Foy (Stephen Dillane), and ex-pro who promises he can get him a trial with Newcastle United. Despite the evident problems in acquiring a passport, Santiago flies to Tyneside where he is immediately - and perplexingly - given a run-out by the team's manager (a composite of Ferguson and Wenger without the charisma).
Needless to say Santi (as he becomes known) is at first a failure. He's too precocious on the ball (think Christiano Ronaldo and you've more or less got his style of play) and fails to impress either the manager or his teammates. But once he befriends the club's ace goalscorer and notorious bad boy Gavin Harris (Alessandro Nivola), everything changes. As Newcastle's season looks doomed thanks to a growing injury list the boy wonder is enlisted to score a series of remarkable and thoroughly unbelievable goals. Along the way he fends off the advances of a stereotypical football agent (Sean Pertwee) and has a desultory relationship with the club's nurse (Anna Friel).
Notwithstanding the fact that most of the events portrayed in the film simply would not happen in football, Goal! uneasily mixes reality and fantasy. Not learning from John Huston's Escape to Victory that football players and film should be kept well apart, the cast list includes Alan Shearer, the Newcastle fist team, and in one of the year's most jawdroppingly embarrassing scenes, David Beckham and the mighty Sven turn up at a party.
One can only imagine what will happen in the sequels. A move to Real Madrid? A split from both the nurse and the agent to go out with the agent's daughter and enlist with Sean Pertwee? Or even a presidential pardon from George Bush so that he can lead the US team to victory at the World Cup? Nothing, it seems, would be beyond the logic of this film.
This is clearly meant to promote football across the world, particularly in the Latin American markets, but the simple fact is that too many men in suits from Sepp Blatter's office in Zurich have drained it of any tension, drama or believability. It is possible to make a great sports film - just look at the recent Friday Night Lights starring Billy Bob Thornton - but Goal! is so concerned with gloss and portraying a positive message that it doesn't even know where to begin.
Paul Hurley
Font size
Mail
My account
Help
Community
Print now
Send to a friend
Related articles
Related products
