Soccer Movies

I noticed some discussion recently about what the best soccer movies are. Unfortunately everyone seems to have gotten the impression that soccer movies should be entertaining. I’m not sure where that crazy idea came from. The movies suggested are the usual suspects including Goal, A Shot At Glory and the perfectly believable Victory in which Pele and Rocky Balboa escape from a German POW camp, but not until after the second half of a soccer match in which they overcome a bunch of Nazis and a partisan referee in a plot line lifted directly from the Michigan State Cup final of 2006.

The problem with these movies is that they don’t really reflect youth soccer. To understand the issues in the kids game you need to look at other movies such as Basic Instinct, in which Sharon Stone demonstrates my often copied interview technique to make sure my kids end on the A team, and Fatal Attraction in which Glen Close shows us all how we should react if our kid gets left on the bench. Billy Bob Thornton’s Mr Woodcock is, of course, directly modeled on Michigan’s most famous DOC, and we all know who the Cheech & Chong of Michigan soccer coaches are.

My own favorite allegory of Youth Soccer is, of course, Jurassic Park in which the Velociraptors represent the little upstart clubs out to change the world but who get swallowed up by the big dinosaurs at the end.