The 1990s were heady days for football’s relationship with cinema with titles such as When Saturday Comes and Fever Pitch encouraging fans to possibly visit their local multiplex on the way home from a match. Could the halcyon days continue? Would a football film end up winning an Oscar? Which one was destined for the bargain bin at your local branch of Blockbuster? Read on as we choose some of the good, the bad and the ugly of 2000s football films.
There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble (2000)
Think Billy’s Boots for the PlayStation generation. Our hero is bullied schoolboy Jimmy who dreams of pulling on Manchester City’s famous sky-blue shirt but finds himself isolated in waters infested by Manchester United supporting sharks. After being gifted the boots of what he believes to be a Maine Road legend and being taken under the wing of his PE teacher, himself a former City player, Jimmy’s chances of becoming a pro start to advance until his boots are stolen on the eve of the big school cup final. After realising the talent was in him all along and not the boots (especially after it’s revealed they used to belong to City’s partially-sighted programme seller), his team recover from 2-0 down to win the tournament. After the match, Jimmy is offered the chance to sign for Manchester United but turns down Old Trafford in favour of his beloved Blues.
Featuring a cast consisting of Ray Winstone (eschewing his usual hard-man role for a more wholesome, familial turn), Ben Miller, Gina McKee and Samia Ghadie (Maria off Coronation Street to you and me), TOJG is a passable affair, somewhat contrived towards the end but there are worse ways to pass an hour and a half.
Mike Bassett: England Manager (2001)
Already familiar to many for his turns as feisty trade unionist Bobby Grant in Brookside or acerbic layabout Jim Royle in the seminal sitcom The Royle Family, Ricky Tomlinson made the jump to the big screen in this mock documentary (a genre all the rage at the time thanks to The Office).
With England struggling to qualify for the World Cup in Brazil, the incumbent manager suffers a heart attack leaving the position vacant. With all of the Premier League’s top managers turning the job down, the FA’s top brass end up appointing Norwich City manager Mike Bassett (something of a journeyman both as a player and a manager with more than a passing resemblance to Sam Allardyce). After bumbling their way through the qualifiers, England do eventually reach the finals but are presented with several obstacles including not having any equipment to train with, star player Kevin Tonkinoon being caught with a transvestite in his hotel room, captain Gary Wackett being arrested for being a football hooligan and assistant Lonnie Urquhart being sacked after an altercation with Bassett. Eventually, England grab a priceless win over Argentina in the decisive group game and embark on a run to the semi-finals which sees Bassett and the team return home to a hero’s welcome.
The film serves as a pastiche of the FA, football journalists and general English football culture at the time with definite cues coming from 1994’s ‘An Impossible Job’, the infamous documentary of Graham Taylor’s travails as England manager while characters Kevin Tonkinoon, Steve Harper and Gary Wackett serve as parodies of the likes of Paul Gascoigne, David Beckham and Stuart Pearce. One of the film’s strengths lies in it’s cameos with Pele, Ronaldo, Gabby Logan and even Barry Venison popping up during the picture. Guaranteed to raise a wry smile and a laugh from football fans but the humour is very much ‘if you know, you know’ which might prove prohibitive to casual viewers.
Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Gurinder Chadha’s light-hearted look at attitudes towards British Asian culture and women’s football won a number of awards and plaudits following it’s release in the spring of 2002 and after watching, it’s easy to see why.
Our protagonist is Jess Bhamra, an 18-year-old football fanatic who idolises David Beckham who would much rather be down the park with her male friends than learning traditional Indian cookery, much to the dismay of her mother. After being spotted by Jules (Keira Knightley in her pre-Pirates of the Caribbean breakout role), Jess signs for her local women’s team against the wishes of her parents. After playing in secret and eventually being caught by her father, Jess is prevented from playing for the team, especially due to the final of the competition clashing with her sister’s wedding. After spending most of the day in a bad mood, Jess is eventually allowed to play in the match, arriving just in time to take the decisive free-kick.
Bend It is a charming look at the social and cultural issues surrounding women’s football at the time as well as the struggles South Asian women may have faced when trying to integrate into something so engrained into British culture as our national game. A lot of the humour comes in the war of attrition between Keira Knightley’s character and her mother (played tremendously by Juliet Stevenson) who would rather her daughter become the same suburban wannabe social climber she became. Given the rise of popularity of women’s football in England following the Euro 2022 victory and run to the 2023 World Cup final, Bend It Like Beckham also serves as a fine time capsule of how far the women’s game has come in a relatively short space of time.
The Goal! Trilogy (2005, 2006, 2009)
Possibly the most quintessential trilogy of football films ever made. If There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble was the Billy’s Boots of the 21st century, Goal! is Roy of the Rovers in the polished FIFA/Sky Sports/Premier League multiverse. Think ‘The Journey’ in FIFA 17, if Alex Hunter was a Mexican illegal immigrant.
The first film, released in 2005, documents the journey of one Santiago Munez, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who works in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant in California while playing amateur football and dreaming of one day making it as a professional. After catching the eye of an ex-Newcastle United hero, Santiago manages to bag a trial with The Magpies and after shaking off the derision of his father soon finds himself in the blood and thunder of English football. After overcoming the bullying and hazing of his reserve team captain (played by Kieran Maguire, probably best known these days for playing Jamie Tartt’s dad in Ted Lasso) and also gaining the affection of a local nurse (Anna Friel), Santiago’s improbable journey sees him break into Newcastle’s first team (cue a scene in which Munez sees the likes of Alan Shearer, Craig Bellamy and, erm, Lee Bowyer in a hazy, awe-inspired gaze across the training ground) and culminates with scoring the winning goal to help The Magpies qualify for the Champions League.
Be honest, you never thought you’d read the name Rutger Hauer in this book did you? Well here he is, playing Real Madrid’s manager in Goal! 2: Living The Dream which sees the action shift from Tyneside to the Spanish capital as Santiago and his pal from Newcastle, Gavin Harris, become the latest in the long line of 2000s Galacticos. As the pressures of representing arguably the biggest club in the world dovetail with the fame and fortune of being a football superstar, Santiago loses a bit of his likeable underdog charm as he cavorts with senoritas and falls out of favour with the gaffer after spending too many evenings drinking a little more than sangria. Fortunately, our hero recovers from his wobble just in time to help Real defeat Arsenal and win the Champions League.
The trilogy came to end in 2009 with Goal! 3: Taking On The World, which played out against the backdrop (and I use that term literally as most of the action is either archive footage or rather obviously green screened) of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Our man Santiago is rather incredulously dropped from frontman to bit=part as the story focusses on two English players making their way to play at the tournament as part of Sven’s army, one of which is played by Leo Gregory of Green Street fame (don’t worry we’re getting to that). There are no far-fetched tales of English glory in this one (again possibly owing to the fact that archive footage is heavily used), England exit the tournament on penalties to Portugal as in real life, the ‘suspending belief’ (or jumping the shark, whichever way you look at it) comes in the shape of one of the main characters passing away in the dressing room after suffering a brain aneurysm. Some humour is retained in the shape of some ‘cheeky chappie’ Geordie supporters going on a lad’s holiday to Germany for the tournament, think Auf Wiedersehen, Pet but not as good.
Each part of the trilogy was (probably quite rightly) panned by critics and football fans alike for the questionable acting and rather overblown plot devices but has retrospectively worked it’s way into the hearts of nostalgic fans, probably because you can class it as the cinematic embodiment of the phrase ‘Pure Barclays’.
The Football Factory/Green Street (2004. 2005)
The football hooligan film is a strange breed, in the late 80s and 90s when films such as the brilliant The Firm (not the remake) and ID became cult classics, football hooliganism was still in the public consciousness and it felt believable that if you left your local multiplex on a Saturday afternoon and passed a football ground on your way home, it was entirely possible that you would see rival fans clashing on the high street. By the time the aforementioned two films came out in the polished, preening mid-2000s in which attending football became something akin to visiting the theatre or Royal Ascot, hooliganism seemed somewhat of a distant memory.
Based on John King’s groundbreaking 1997 book, The Football Factory is played out through the eyes of Tommy Johnson (played by the finest actor of his generation, Sir Danny Dyer), a bored Chelsea supporting late-twentysomething who lived for the weekend and the brutal buzz of clashing with rival supporters. As the big FA Cup clash with Millwall beckons, Johnson is left questioning whether partaking in ‘mass offs’ (his words not mine) is really worth it and suffers chilling premonitions regarding the fate of himself and his fellow Headhunters.
Green Street, released a year later, sees Elijah Wood go from hoping to become The Lord Of The Rings (never seen it, got no interest, sorry) to integrating with West Ham’s fearsome hooligan firm The Green Street Elite (a thinly veiled homage to the real-life Inter City Firm) after being expelled from Harvard, under the tutelage of Pete (played somewhat horrendously by Charlie ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Hunnam) who is the leader of the group. As the big FA Cup clash with Millwall beckons (there’s a theme emerging here), Elijah’s character Matt has to deal with the group turning on him for supposedly being a journalist and finding out his brother-in-law was once the leader of the group who was was responsible for the death of the leader of the Millwall firm’s son. The picture comes to a violent and bloody crescendo in the shadow of the Millennium Dome in which Millwall’s ‘top boy’ seemingly gets his revenge.
I feel it’s important to note that I don’t like either of these films, probably because I’ve never been (or indeed harboured a desire to become) a football hooligan. The acting in both of them, especially Green Street is at best questionable (especially Hunnam’s attempt at a Cockney accent) with the plots of both films being depressingly formulaic and predictable. Perhaps unsurprisingly both films were overlooked by the Academy but it may surprise you to know that Green Street received not one, but two sequels (both of course straight-to-DVD). Hopefully, much like hooliganism itself, the sub-genre goes back to being a relic of the past.
The Damned United (2009)
This is the best film about football, this was the best film about football, this is the best football film there ever will be. This is a hill i’m willing to die on and i’ll happily fight anyone who disagrees (maybe instead of a football hooligan, i’m a film hooligan).
Derived from David Peace’s brilliant 2006 novel that took readers into the mind of the great Brian Clough, the film’s action flashes between taking Derby County from Second Division mediocrity to the brink of European glory and his disastrous 44-day spell at the helm of the all-conquering Leeds United of 1974. Clough is played tremendously by Michael Sheen with Timothy Spall as the perfect foil in the role of Peter Taylor. Stephen Graham portrays Leeds talismanic skipper Billy Bremner sneeringly while Colm Meaney as Don Revie allows for the infamous televised debate between the two managers after Clough’s dismissal from Leeds to be played faithfully and true to the source material.
You may think my intro to this section of this chapter is nothing more than hyperbole but if I can borrow a famous phrase from the protagonist ‘I wouldn’t say it’s the best football film ever but it’s in the top one.’
Honourable Mentions
Ally McCoist wasn’t always getting excited at AC/DC being played at half-time of Champions League games, he was once part of Hollywood’s most unlikely partnership as he teamed up with Robert Duvall (and Batman himself, Michael Keaton) in A Shot At Glory (2001) in which Ally plays a Scottish striker returning north of the border to help a provincial lower-division side (who just happen to be managed by his former father-in-law) upset the odds and win the Scottish Cup.
What happens if you mix the Burt Reynolds classic The Longest Yard with the likes of Snatch and Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels? You get Mean Machine (2001), Vinnie Jones stars as a disgraced former England captain who finds himself at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and tasked with coaching the inmates in a match against the guards. You probably already know the outcome but it’s worth a watch for the turns of Sir Danny Dyer and Jason Statham.
As well as the aforementioned football hooligan romps, the 2000s also spawned another three notable entries into the genre. Cass (2008) tells the true story of Cass Pennant’s rise to becoming the leader of West Ham’s revered Inter-City Firm in the 1980s battling racism alongside rival fans. Staying in East London The Firm (2009) is a poor remake of the 1989 Gary Oldman classic which suffered from being released around the same time as crowd disorder in a big cup clash between West Ham and Millwall (there’s that theme again) while 2009 also saw the release of Awaydays. Based on the Kevin Sampson novel of the same name, the film at least earns the title of being my favourite film from the hooligan sub-genre, mainly due to a soundtrack containing the likes of Joy Division, The Cure and Echo and The Bunnymen.
The final honourable mention goes to Looking For Eric (2009) in which Steve Evets (formerly of The Fall) overcomes the sight of his life falling apart around him thanks to the help of visions of his idol, Eric Cantona. Slowly, but surely our hero rebuilds his life and finds the purpose he’s been missing through the guidance of King Eric. Despite not necessarily being about football, it’s a film that stars Eric Cantona that is actually worth watching, which can’t be said too often.
This is an excerpt from my written project Remember The Name: Magic, Madness & Metatarsals, A Celebration of 2000s Football. If you would like to keep up with the progress of the book, follow me on Twitter/X @DanBarkerGray.
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