It was the province of Europe and South America one hundred years ago, but soccer – or football, if you prefer – is a genuinely global sport these days, with viewers for the English Premier League, La Liga, and the Bundesliga numbering in the hundreds of millions across the world. It’s hardly surprising that football has therefore proved fertile ground for documentary makers. Here are ten of the must-see documentaries about the beautiful game.
10. All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur
This docuseries debuted on Prime in 2020 and related the ups and downs of London club Tottenham Hotspur’s 2019-20 season in the English Premier League. As a warts-and-all, behind-the-scenes documentary, commentators were surprised to find a distinct lack of warts on display, with some reviewers accusing the makers of delivering a series so slick and devoid of conflict that it lacked interest. Not even the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the season’s closing weeks, with all of the unprecedented disruption to the sporting calendar it brought with it, saved the series from cancellation. Still, if only for the sumptuously filmed coverage of Spurs’ matches, it’s worth a rewatch. Other entries in the All or Nothing franchise include series about the German and Brazilian national teams.
9. Hillsborough
On 15 April 1989, during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough, a crush developed on the Leppings Lane stand that resulted in the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans. The tragedy not only led to the passing of legislation by the British government banning standing terraces from top-flight English football grounds but also led to lurid allegations of hooliganism by the Liverpool fans on the day, with one British newspaper accusing survivors of pickpocketing the dead. It was only twenty-five years and two official inquests later that authorities exonerated the fans and returned a verdict of unlawful killing due to gross negligence by South Yorkshire Police, who had been responsible for crowd control on the day. This 2014 ESPN documentary, revised and updated by the BBC in 2016, is an uncomfortable but compelling memorial to those fans who wanted to cheer their team on to the cup final and never got the chance.
8. Sunderland ‘Til I Die
Netflix’s Sunderland ‘Til I Die looked at a club at the heart of a working-class community almost five years before Welcome To Wrexham pulled the same trick and offers a thoughtful, vibrant take on the life of Sunderland AFC, a club from England’s industrial north-east that, at the time the first season debuted in 2018, was just beginning what would turn out to be its worst run in its 140-year history, dropping down into the English third tier for the first time ever. Cue much hand-wringing and soul-searching from the club’s many fans, but, as the saying goes, football’s a funny old game: the following season, the club reached the final of the EFL Trophy. The approach is sympathetic and the personalities endearing, and as the supporters stare an ignominious relegation in the face, it would take a heart of stone not to blub.
7. Goal!
From the jazzy soundtrack to the bouffant hairdos, this documentary film is very much of its time: a document straight from the Swinging Sixties of London that tells the story of the eighth FIFA World Cup, held in England in 1966. In the time of Pelé, Eusebio, and Moore, Goal! shows not only football from a bygone era – a slower game, with far more rigidity of tactics and far less protection for goalkeepers – but also an ancient Britain. The scenes shot away from the goings-on on the football pitch show a 1960s London that, in among the dour, earth-colored jackets and suits, was just starting to loosen up after the conservatism of post-war Britain, hippie culture and psychedelia being a matter of months away – as the plunging hemlines of female passers-by and the lengthening hair of the young male Londoners demonstrates. It’s a documentary also worth watching for the stadiums – with their massive terraces, Everton’s Goodison Park and Manchester United’s Old Trafford, not to mention Middlesbrough’s now-demolished ground at Ayresome Park, look entirely different to today’s postmodern mega stadiums.
6. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
No one would argue that, at his peak, French midfielder and World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane was the finest footballer in the world, but would you really want to watch 90 minutes of close-up footage of the playmaker running around on a football pitch? That is literally what goes on in this 2006 curiosity, but as the minutes tick by, the film becomes oddly compelling, aided by a dreamy soundtrack by Scottish post-rock band Mogwai. As Zidane drifts in and out of the game, watching the action happening off-camera, the viewer starts to feel how much of a football match is spent observing rather than interacting with the ball. Just don’t expect insights into the man’s character and career – anyone looking for a conventional documentary will be sorely disappointed.
5. Next Goal Wins
The ultimate documentary about football that isn’t really about football, 2014’s Next Goal Wins takes an affectionate look at the American Samoa national team. If the name doesn’t exactly ring bells, don’t be surprised – the team only entered its first tournament at the turn of the 2000s when, in a qualifying campaign of four matches, it scored no goals and conceded fifty-seven, including a record-breaking 31-0 defeat at the hands of Australia in 2001. Years later, manager Thomas Rongen attempted to turn the team’s fortunes around, resulting in this gem. But for all the football on show here, the real point is the players’ perseverance and the never-say-die attitude, which had viewers rooting for them regardless of their loyalties. The story has certainly caught the popular imagination: New Zealand director Taika Waititi’s fictionalized feature film adaptation, also titled Next Goal Wins, premieres later this fall.
4. Hero
You may not recognize the title, but the official documentary film of the 1986 FIFA World Cup is an utter delight. Lavishly scored by ex-Yes member and Elton John collaborator Rick Wakeman and narrated by Michael Caine, the documentary used high-quality film cameras to capture the action at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. In the year of Argentinian superstar Diego Maradona’s greatest triumph, the film covers everything: the nail-biting drama of French playmaker Michel Platini’s miss during the quarter-final penalty shootout against Brazil, and the unlikely outcome that followed; unfancied Mexico’s remarkable run to the quarter-finals, thanks in large part to their talisman Hugo Sanchez, and Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” goal against England, in which he illegally palmed the ball into the net – as well as the mazy dribble past five England players that followed just a few minutes later, and which even today is proclaimed by many to be the finest goal ever scored. Never has football looked so good on the big screen.
3. One Night In Turin
England manager Bobby Robson always seemed to be one game away from getting fired – and yet the venerable former England player persevered, managing the national team between 1982 and 1990. England was not expected to trouble the world’s best at the 1990 World Cup, but, despite the doubts of commentators over player selections, Robson’s controversial adoption of the sweeper system (then a relatively new innovation in English football), and question marks over the maturity of England’s wunderkind Paul Gascoigne, England made it through a tricky group stage and progressed, eventually reaching the semi-final, where they played their old nemesis, West Germany. Narrated by Gary Oldman and soundtracked by British pop groups of the period, including New Order, the Charlatans, the Stone Roses, and Happy Mondays, 2010’s One Night In Turin recounts the events of England’s tournament when Robson’s England came to within a penalty kick of glory.
2. Finding Jack Charlton
The other feel-good story of the 1990 World Cup concerned not England but newcomers Ireland, for whom it was their first-ever appearance in the finals. With a thin playing squad and far from abundant training facilities, incoming manager (and former World Cup winner) Jack Charlton had little to cheer about on his assumption of the manager’s role in 1986. His solution was to spend the next four years scouring the English league for players with Irish backgrounds, seeking to persuade them to don the green of Ireland under UEFA’s eligibility rules, which permitted players to represent the countries of their parents. In short order, Charlton had assembled an unremarkable but defensively rock-solid team that not only reached the last eight of the 1990 World Cup but qualified again four years later. Universal adulation in Ireland and even a meeting with the Pope followed for the Republic’s most famous adopted Irishman – but this accomplished 2020 BBC documentary film also takes a tender look at Charlton’s struggles against dementia in his final years.
1. Welcome to Wrexham
There’s a reason why Ryan Reynolds’ and Rob McElhenney’s docuseries about a (formerly) obscure lower division Welsh football club has proved a smash hit with viewers – it’s classic feelgood television. Wrexham is a former mining town that just happens to be home to the world’s third-oldest football club. But in spite of 160 years of history behind them, including an enviable reputation as “giant-killers” – seriously, the club has defeated countless top-flight teams, including Arsenal, in the FA Cup – and even a period of European football (as representatives of Wales) in their 1970s heyday, Wrexham AFC never made it to the Premier League. Worse still, they have spent the last sixteen years in the ignominious realm of fifth-tier, non-league football alongside semi-professional clubs with far less pedigree. But barely three years after Reynolds’ and McElhenney’s takeover, the club has taken giant strides, winning their division this year and returning to League football. The only question is: how far can they go? Welcome to Wrexham‘s second season will drop on Hulu/FX on Sept. 12.
