Football and film have an odd relationship. Most football films have become running jokes, clichéd uplifting stories that seem like they've been taken from a rags to riches template. They've become known as being implausible and inspirational, the unbelievable tale of kids who go from LA slums to playing for Real Madrid, via Newcastle (sorry, Goal!).
One genre of film that lends itself well to football, though, is the documentary. Football documentaries have proved a good way to show the intricacies of genius, the role that football plays in wider culture and some of the most unbelievable stories that sport has come up with.
Over the years, some of these films have made their way on to the internet. So here are the 5 best football documentaries you can watch on YouTube.
Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
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Who's in it: Giorgio Chinaglia, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto
Year of release: 2006
IMDB score: 7.3/10
There's something about the New York Cosmos that keeps people going back to them. When they 'relaunched' in 2010, it was all pretty hyped up and, since then, they've been trying to return to their former cult status of glamour and glory. They'll never live up to it though.
"Once in a Lifetime..." tells us how the Cosmos became the coolest team in the world. It shows their rise from nothing when they were founded in 1970, to the team of Pele, Beckenbauer and Chinaglia a few years later, and then their downfall as American 'soccer' began to crumble. The documentary sets this against the backdrop of New York in the 70s, and shows how the Cosmos players became the biggest ballers in the city and what could have happened had football truly broken America.
Eventually, it all fell apart. After the league folded and Rupert Murdoch tried to take over their parent company, the money dried up and, in 1985, only fifteen years after it all started, the team folded. The glamour, the players and their quick downfall meant they were always destined to become one of the biggest cult teams in football history.
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
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Who's in it: Zinedine Zidane
Year of release: 2006
IMDB rating: 6.3/10
Zidane has always been one of football's more interesting players. From the way he orchestrated and controlled the way a game was going, to the red card that ended his last match as a professional footballer in 2006, there was always something about him that other players didn't have. This film, though, isn't meant to shed a light on the inner workings of one of football's tortured geniuses. Instead, the directors set 17 cameras on Zidane for the course of a La Liga match between Real Madrid and Villareal in 2005. The film is played in real time, and it focuses purely on Zidane. When the ball is at the other end of the pitch, the cameras stay focused on him. The film shows him running, it shows him struggling to keep up and, at the end, it shows the other side of Zidane as he's sent off for his part in a brawl.
Played over the top of the footage is an interview with Zidane, during which he talks about his earliest memories, his childhood and his relationship with the game. It's all soundtracked by an arty score from Mogwai to really nail the pretentious, art house vibe it's going for. All in all, though, it's an interesting experiment in cinema, it shows Zidane in his element and, by the end, it starts to become eerily hypnotic.
The Game of Their Lives
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Who's in it: N/A
Year of release: 2002
IMDB rating: 7.6/10
In England, the 1966 World Cup is remembered for one thing and one thing only. Other than England's victory, there's one even more unlikely story that came from the competition. North Korea, then just as much of a communist outcast on the world stage as they are now, managed to make it to the quarter finals of the competition. The game that got them to that stage was a 1-0 win over Italy in their last game of the group stages. It was, as the title suggests, the game of their lives.
The film is told through interviews with the few members of that team who survived until 2002. On one hand, its an inspiring story of an unprepared and unlikely team fighting their way to the highest reaches of global football. On the other hand, though, it lays bare the indoctrination and cult-like love of their country's regime and leader that drove them forwards.
Football Fight Club
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Who's in it: N/A
Year of release: 2014
IMDB rating: N/A
If football has a dark side, it's the hooliganism so often associated with it. In England there's a long history of fans getting smashed and then smashing up other fans and it's been immortalised and romanticised in films like Green Street since the beginning of time. Football Fight Club takes a different approach though. Told through interviews with members of some of the UK's football firms, it casts a light on why young men up and down the country see an attraction in beating up other young men and getting beaten up in towns like Bury and Middlesborough.
For a film about violence, there are some touching moments. Dante, a prominent member of Tottenham's firm, takes the cameras to his dad's grave and seems to realise for the first time that his dad wouldn't approve of what he does, and Carl, from Man City's Blazing Squad, reflects on the "time's I've had with my mates, the bond we've got, the buzz we've had together." When football hooliganism is told like this, as a community for young men who don't have much else, it kind of almost makes sense.
Coach Zoran and his African Tigers
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Who's in it: N/A
Year of release: 2014
IMDB rating: 7.6/10
As the opening sequence of the film announces, every country needs a national football team. In 2011, South Sudan was born out of decades of civil war between the fractious northern and southern areas of Sudan and, true enough, it needed a national football team.
The eponymous Coach Zoran is an eccentric Serbian journeyman manager who, briefly, took charge of the fledgling nation's football team. He battles against having no money, falling foul of those in charge of him and other problems endemic within the world's newest nation. On the face of it, its an uplifting story of a battle against adversity and taking a football team from nothingness to moderate and relative glory. It's more than that, though. The story of the nascent football team is just a way of telling about the birth of a nation. Zoran's African Tigers, as he nicknames them, are the sign of a country attempting to leave behind the war and destitution of its early years and move onto being a prospering and accepted nation.
