This week’s movie list brings you the greatest soccer movies of all time. Grab your soccerball and some friends and check out these sweet flicks.
Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
This is a great soccer film that not a lot of people have probably seen but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an incredible film. Bend It Like Beckham tells the story of an Indian girl named Jessminder, or Jess, that can think about nothing else but playing soccer but her family feels that it is not right for Indian girls to play soccer.
One day while Jess is in the park she is offered a huge opportunity by a British girl named Jules to play for a local girls’ soccer club called Hounslow Harriers. Jess forms a great friendship with Jules and turns out to be a great addition to the team even though she has never played organized soccer before yet she still faces different obstacles in her quest to become a professional soccer player. Jess desperately wants the approval of her family so that she can play at a higher level and she must also deal with first love even though the love is also forbidden in her culture. The film shows the story of girl that will go against almost everything she was taught just to play the game she has loved so much since childhood.
Goal! (2005)
Every boy has a dream no matter where there from and in the film Goal! Santiago Munoz’s dream is to play professional soccer. The movie tells the story of a young man from Mexico that moves to L.A. with his family where he helps his dad and little brother run a lawn care business.
He just plays soccer in a lowly local league until he gets the opportunity of a lifetime from a scout for Newcastle United, a European Soccer Club. At first, the two biggest things that stop him from going to Europe is money and his father who believes his place is in L.A. helping out with the family business. Eventually, his grandma gives him the money and confidence to go to Europe to fulfill his dream. When he gets there he finds it’s a struggle to adjust to playing and living in a different place but thanks to his teammate and a new love Santiago finds a way to triumph even when others did not believe in him.
Gracie (2007)
I have been a big sports fan for many years and I watch men and women’s sports. I realize that women’s sports are not as popular as men’s because people believe there not as entertaining, athletic or tough. The film Gracie tells the story of a 15-year-old girl that fought to repel these stereotypes. The movie follows a young lady, Gracie, determined to take her dead brother’s place on the high school’s varsity soccer team. People in her school and other guys on the team don’t believe she has the skill or just the straight up rugged toughness because she is a girl, but she works hard to prove them wrong. The film Gracie sends the message to girls out there to not feed into the stereotypes and chase after what you believe in even if you are a girl competing with a bunch of guys. She showed that it shouldn’t be about your gender it should be about your skill and heart.
The Big Green (1995)
Disney seems to have a knack for making pretty good movies about a misfit group of kids that go from chumps to champs (see The Mighty Ducks). The film The Big Green is about a British school teacher that begins teaching at a small school in Elma, Texas.
She has a hard time reaching her students as they prove to be a rowdy bunch that doesn’t seem to believe in their abilities to be good students or good anything else for that matter.
Eventually, their teacher Ms. Montgomery shares with them her love of soccer. She informs them that she wants them all to be on a soccer team so they can compete in a local league. Of course, these kids know nothing about the game of soccer so with the help of the local sheriff they coach the kids and teach them to believe in themselves. The movie shows that sometimes playing a simple game such as soccer can teach a lot about life and that it only takes one person to show a bunch of kids they are not losers but winners as long as they try hard and show confidence.
Dare to Dream: The Story of the U.S. Women’s Team
This was a great documentary about the development of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team and how much influence there amazing players had on soccer in this country. Before Title IX, obviously, there was no women’s soccer team, but afterwards the U.S. saw the birth of a women’s soccer team that would represent the country in international play.
The team eventually flourished and they reached the peak of their popularity in 1999 when they won the World Cup at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. The documentary details how popular that team and what is what like to see that many people watching a women’s sporting event.
They wanted to show how far women’s sports have come and that U.S. Women’s Soccer had a huge influence on that. The documentary talks about how many girls the team inspired to play soccer in this country because they wanted to be like Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy players that are now legends in women’s soccer.
By: Damone Griffin
Features Correspondent