Film Review: The Damned United

The Damned United directed by Tom Hooper; written by Peter Morgan and David Peace (Columbia Pictures, BBC Films, Screen Yorkshire, R, 98 minutes)

Starring Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, and Colm Meaney.

The Real Football 

So I really love football. I don’t mean American football—the NFL is great and I enjoy it thoroughly but it is not the subject of this review. I mean actual football—fútbol to some, soccer to others. Despite my affinity to the sport, I am rather new to the game. I am able to discuss, in detail, the current teams, tactics, and players but I haven’t a clue about the legends of years past.

For this reason, The Damned United interests me. It depicts the tumultuous and short-lived era of Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) as the manager of British heavyweight, Leeds United, in 1974 after the storied manager, Don Revie (Colm Meaney), takes the English national team job.

When It Gets Personal 

The story, though, begins years earlier when Clough and his right-hand man, Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall), manage middling Second Division club Derby County.

Upon drawing Leeds United in the FA Cup in 1968, Clough readies the Derby pitch in expectation of hosting this First Division leaders and Revie, a fellow former Sunderland player. When Revie ignores Clough and uses dirty tactics to win the cup tie, a rivalry is born.

Clough uses this snub to fuel his ambition and inspire his team (coupled with some shrewd signings) to promotion into the first division.

Now battling Leeds in league play, Clough and Taylor experience first-hand the poor play and win-at-every-cost attitude of Leeds United. In every way, Clough molds Derby County to represent the antithesis of Leeds United—sort of like the Red Sox free flowing attitude in comparison to the stuffy feel of the Yankees.

In Over Your Head 

Later, when Revie earns a promotion to the English National Team, Clough jumps at the chance of managing Leeds, even if his compatriot, Taylor, feels loyalty for a previously accepted offer. With the dynamic duo split, Clough’s time with Leeds suffers.

Ever the pugnacious personality, Clough welcomes the Leeds faithful by calling his players cheaters for their style of play and disregards the Leeds championships because they weren’t won with beauty. In short, Leeds aren’t champions because they don’t play like champions.

Of course, such statements do not win over his players. Still devoted to the managerial and personal style of Don Revie, the Leeds players rebel against Clough leading to the worst start in 20 years.

What follows leads the viewer to ask questions about the value of teamwork and the importance of communication. Clough is a brilliant manager but without the help of Taylor, he feels unmoored. When the Leeds players refuse to respond to his managerial style, Clough loses the locker room. In a personal vendetta against Revie, Clough finds himself over his head.

Filling in Some History 

As a soccer fan, I have heard of Clough and Taylor and the brilliance they enacted with Derby County and later with Nottingham Forest. But I don’t know many specifics. Even though I would not label The Damned United a masterpiece, I value it for its contribution to my understanding of soccer’s history. Even though it’s hard to think of a time before Manchester United, earlier eras held their fair share of unique narratives and dramatic personalities.

I enjoyed learning more about Brian Clough and Peter Taylor. If you call yourself a soccer fan, you need to watch The Damned United. It’s not the greatest film in the world, but it tells a fascinating story.

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Book Review: The World is a Ball

The World Is a Ball: The Joy, Madness, and Meaning of Soccer by John Doyle (New York: Rodale, 2010. 352 pp)

Born in Ireland, John Doyle currently works as the television critic for Toronto’s The Globe and Mail. Holding a B.A. in English Literature and an M.A. in Anglo-English Studies from University College, Dublin, Doyle moved to Canada in order to pursue a Ph.D. at York University. Doyle writes about soccer for many publications and has worked on location at multiple World Cups and European Championships. In addition to The World Is a Ball, Doyle published A Great Feast of Light in 2005. Doyle has won two internal Globe and Mail awards for his writing.

Culture Soup

I've always thought it would be fun to attend a world event like the Olympic Games or a World Cup. The idea of a myriad of cultures converging on one city fascinates me. The sheer numbers, though, terrify me. I’m not a huge fan of large crowds.

Perhaps, for me, the World Cup provides the most intriguing spectacle. With soccer – the sport adored by the majority of the world, the world championship matters.

In The World Is a Ball, John Doyle explores this worldwide phenomenon. With a decade of soccer coverage for North American publications, Doyle provides a first-hand account of these tournaments and the convergence of cultures.

Watching Those Watching the Game

Interestingly, while one would think that Doyle would focus predominately on the tactics and analysis of the players on the pitch, he seems more interested in the fans. As the world watches the game, Doyle watches the supporters.

For ages, the media focus on hooliganism. With fear dispensed in small to medium doses, many foreigners avoid soccer matches for panic of fan-to-fan violence. Yet Doyle perceives these sporting events as moments of celebration no matter the end result.

On the field, Brazil plays with flair and beauty; in the stands, Brazilian fans act the same. On the field, Italy plays a slow, methodical game; in the stands, the fans are lazy and confident. On this principle, Doyle expands,

“That’s part of the complicated meaning of the World Cup. There is an elaborate synergy between the traveling fans and their country’s team. A nation projects itself, all its hopes and dreams and tangled histories, onto the team. And the team somehow embodies all the complex characteristics of the nation” (18).

Global Soccer

Moreover, views of nationalistic hooliganism fail in the face of globalized soccer. Where nationalism in the past existed with players remaining inside its countries borders, the new strategy for most national teams is to seek players and coaches from all over the world. Doyle writes,

“At the end, just before the Estádio da Luz erupts in colorful, spectacular fireworks displays, the TV commentator reminds viewers that the Greek coach, Otto Rehhagel, is German and Portugal’s coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, is Brazilian. The point is to tell us that, even at this intensely competitive, nationalistic level, soccer transcends borders and nationality” (132).

Field Notes

However, The World Is a Ball flows poorly. As the book details international soccer matches over the last decade, the stories become repetitive and resemble field notes for the stories Doyle obviously filed for his paid gig.

Additionally, Doyle romanticizes the notion of fan and team unity. While international matches of yesteryear exhibited teams with a national style and identity, modern soccer has found tactics to become increasingly crowd-sourced. Successful national teams blend the possession-style total football of the Netherlands with the defensive tenacity of Italy and the aggressive set play style of Germany. In other words, the way teams play soccer today is becoming tactically similar.

Finally, Doyle writes with basic assumptions about soccer. For those interested in becoming acquainted with the sport, Doyle’s writing will leave you dazed and confused. While no one suggests that a soccer writer must begin a book with a basic explanation of soccer, Doyle uses soccer-specific terms without defining them for a broader audience. Although I understood him, I don’t think his lexicon of terms allows inclusion of non-soccer fans.

A Tragic View of the Universe

Despite my reservations, Doyle contemplates some of the deeper meanings behind the joys of soccer. With low scoring games, spotty refereeing, and theatrical flopping, soccer is not an Americanized sport. Yet, these very issues point to core artistic values. Doyle pens,

“Soccer is a sport perfectly designed to reinforce a tragic view of the universe, because basically it is a long series of frustrations leading up to near certain heartbreak” (311).

This sentiments ring true with the observance of one game. A team can play the perfect game and lose. While a pitcher in baseball gains muscle memory with practice in order to throw the same pitch in the same location whenever he desires it, a soccer player relies on luck. The best for which he or she can hope is to create enough chances to get a positive result.

On the topic of poor refereeing – an experience that United States Men’s National Team fans know full-well with the disallowed goal on a phantom foul against Slovenia in the last World Cup – Doyle writes,

“Injustice happens, but time passes, the world turns just as the ball does during the game. The whole point of the game is that the ball turns, moves forward, much like we do” (315).

Although The World Is a Ball plods somewhat without much stylistic difference and mischaracterizes the connections between the styling of fans and national teams, I enjoyed the first-hand account of the World Cup. With a convergence of culture in one country, we see something bigger than a sporting event; we see a global culture. If you can get past the difficulties and understand the basic terms in soccer, The World Is a Ball is an entertaining read. Nevertheless, I suggest starting somewhere else in soccer literature.

Book Review: Soccernomics

Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport


By Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (New York: Nation Books, 2009. 328 pp)

Simon Kuper writes weekly sports columns for the Financial Times. Of his many books written on soccer from an anthropological perspective, Kuper’s Soccer Against the Enemy won the William Hill Prize for sports book of the year. Kuper lives in Paris with his wife and daughter.

Stefan Szymanski is a professor of economics and the director of Sports Network Research Center at Cass Business School in London. He has published many articles on the business of sport with a special interest in soccer and the Olympics. Szymanski lives in London.

Reviewed by Donovan Richards

With the World Cup in full swing, soccer clichés slide from the mouths of devoted supporters and objective commentators.

Read any World Cup match report or listen to a sports-talk radio station and you will inevitably hear points documented in Kuper’s book:

“… The penalty looks like the most unfair device in all of sports …” (p. 114); “… Whenever a country bids to host a World Cup or an Olympics, its politicians prophesy an ‘economic bonanza’ …” (p. 236); or “… An African country would ‘soon’ win the World Cup” (p. 306).

Since these sayings and many others like them become recognized as true in virtue of their logic alone, Kuper and Szymanski offer Soccernomics as a remedy to heal the biases that keep fans, players, and management in a bedridden state of clichés and superficial knowledge.

Written along the lines of Moneyball by Michael Lewis, Kuper and Szymanski suggest that soccer ought to be evaluated not by well-trodden clichés but by the data. With the wit of a creative writer and the statistical graphs of an economist, Soccernomics splits into three sections that seek to find answers debunking common sayings.

The Clubs: Racism, Stupidity, Bad Transfers, Capital Cities, the Mirage of the NFL, and What Actually Happened in That Penalty Shoot-Out in Moscow

This portion of the book dives into the business of soccer. It describes the continually poor decisions made by most clubs, and provides anecdotes of successful people bucking the trend of unwise financial decisions such as Arsѐne Wenger, a trained economist and the manager of the North London soccer club Arsenal, and Jean-Michel Aulas, a former software entrepreneur who is now the president of the soccer club Olympique Lyon located in the French city of Lyon.

Aulas in particular became notable for his process of purchasing players in their early 20s when they were cheaper and selling them for top Euro as they hit their prime ages of 27 to 29.

The Fans: Loyalty, Suicides, Happiness, and the Country with the Best Supporters

After outlining the soccer business, Kuper and Szymanski proceed to the consumer, where the authors seek to learn more about the buying practices of the fans. Are people life-long fans of one team or do they support many? Is the passion for soccer so great that when teams lose fans commit suicide?

Countries: Rich and Poor, Tom Thumb, Guus Ghiddink, Saddam, and the Champions of the Future

Although the sections on The Clubs and The Fans provide fascinating information on how professional soccer leagues worldwide run their “businesses” and how people respond to the product on the pitch — a term used in soccer to refer to the playing field — I was particularly interested in the Countries section.

Most soccer fans share a common conception, something along the lines of “since a large percentage of athletes come from poor or working-class backgrounds, poor nations will eventually become the world powers of soccer.”

At first glance, this reasoning seems to be correct. Wayne Rooney, who is the 2010 season’s leading scorer in the English Premier League, (widely considered the most prestigious league in the world) grew up in a home with a father who was often unemployed. While most middle-class parents encouraged their children to put down the soccer ball and get back to arithmetic, Wayne Rooney’s situation allowed him to continue practicing dribbling, passing, and shooting the soccer ball.

Of course, Soccernomics is not generalizing that all poor families are indifferent to education. Instead, the idea is that poor children are more likely to see sports as an avenue out of poverty.

Based in Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, the writers argue that it takes 10,000 hours to become world-class at a certain skill. If living conditions allowed Rooney to practice more and become more skilled at a faster pace than children putting time in other activities, many figure that the same should apply to the youth in impoverished nations.
Poverty as a Game Changer

However, the data prove this concept to be false. Kuper and Szymanski write,

“Growing tall is not just a matter of what you eat. When children become ill, their growth is interrupted, and because poor children tend to get ill more often than rich ones, they usually end up shorter … The ghost of apartheid will bug the Bafana [The nickname of the South African national soccer team] at the World Cup. One reason South Africans are so bad at soccer is that most of them didn’t get enough good food” (p. 266).

Considering the population of South Africa and popularity of the sport, the South African soccer team should be one of the dominant nations. However, the argument of the writers becomes even more convincing when we see that in this current World Cup, not only has South Africa become the first host nation in history to not advance from the group stages to the knockout stages, but also out of the five African nations represented in the tournament, only Ghana advanced to the playoff rounds.

In addition to a 10,000-hour rule, Kuper and Szymanski propose a “fifteen-thousand-dollar rule” as the minimum per capita income for a nation to succeed at international sports. Although Wayne Rooney grew up in a poor neighborhood relative to the rest of England, he still had nourishing meals and access to medical care. For many prospective soccer players around the world, the reality of poverty will deny them the goals of international athletic stardom.

While we watch the World Cup, it is imperative for Christians to remember the disadvantages people in poor countries must endure.

Although the common sentiment in the sports world is that international sporting events give poor countries a chance to compete on equal ground with rich countries, the facts tell us that poverty provides a crippling shortcoming in competition. Poverty has devastating consequences. Not only does it alter the quality of life by limiting basic necessities, but also rids poor countries of the ability to experience the unifying joy of bringing home a world championship.

As a soccer fan, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A reader might need a minimal understanding of how soccer works, but Kuper and Szymanski have an inviting prose that is open to those outside of soccer fandom. Considering that it is a World Cup year, I would recommend Soccernomics to anyone who has even the slightest interest in soccer. Since the writers do a fantastic job of breaking down the fiscal side of creating a strong professional club as well as a strong national team, I would also suggest this book to anyone who is interested in the economics of sport.

Although soccer brings a gentle reminder of the devastating impact of poverty in our broken world, the sport carries a unifying aspect illustrated every four years at the World Cup.

Originally Posted at http://spu.edu/depts/sbe/cib/reviews/review-soccernomics.asp