06 · 13 · 18

The floodlights at the stadium: soccer and cinema

Alonso Díaz de la Vega @diazdelavega1

Marketing clichés hold soccer as a synonym of unity, muted rifles and holding hands. The world is better during international tournaments, they say, and even though roughhousing and bar fights sometimes contradict them, these clichés —like all the others— bear some truth. As part of the individual, cultural and human identities, football is a symbol of communion in spite of all differences. It may also be the reflection of individual sacrifice or the sublimation of conflict. After all, sports competitions are, in the words of Peter Gabriel, war without tears. Cinema, of course, hasn’t ignored these facets and in fact it has expressed them all either in films centered on the game itself or in scenes which use soccer to underscore an idea.

Most sports films usually emphasize the triumph against adversity. John Huston did it, for example, in his film Escape to Victory (1981), in which a soccer match between POW’s and their German captors ends in a daring escape. The scenes set at the playing field, and starred by Pelé, Ossie Ardiles and Paul Van Himst, express the seriousness and beauty of their trade as a language of freedom. To play is to defy; to win, despite the injustice of an overridden goal, is to become free.

A film by Aardman Animations also captures the desire for liberty when a village of cavemen is subjected by a more advanced civilization which forces them to gamble their future in a soccer match. In Early Man (2018, dir. Nick Park) the game links the main characters in a more intense way than life in the community does, and it also drives them towards gender inclusion by having women play in their team. It’s actually a girl who trains them and helps them grasp victory. This reveals a political and even revolutionary aspect to the game, which is explored as well in other socially aware films.

One of the most popular ones, of course, is City of God (2002, dir. Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund), from Brazil. In one of its first scenes a group of robbers is interrupted by the police during a heist. The criminals run through the houses, followed by a camera that seems to float, and they end up hiding in a soccer match being played by the children of the community. This is not just a typical image of economically underdeveloped places: the court —perhaps for the same reason— is a shelter which lightens poverty.

In the background of war films we usually see children playing the most accessible sport they find while the foreign soldiers look at them —if they do— as if sheltering themselves from the images of battle. In The Hurt Locker (2008, dir. Kathryn Bigelow) there’s a twist to this commonplace. Sergeant James starts a friendship with his favorite piracy dealer, an Iraqi boy who calls himself Beckham, “like the player”. For a moment the soldier and the child play at penalty shots and an unlikely friendship blossoms among the shrapnel and aggressive raids.

There are those who will not see the relationships started by the game but rather an impious pleasure, like the fanatics in Timbuktu (2014, dir. Abderrahmane Sissako). As the jihadists reach a Malian community, the new leaders ban all sports. In a moving scene the young people play with an imaginary soccer ball, wishing for the days when their religion was synonymous with spirituality, not prohibition. Unlike them, a group of children in Germany: Year Zero (1948, dir. Roberto Rossellini) excludes the protagonist from a soccer game. The last nazi, Edmund rambles through a devastated Berlin looking for compassion and perhaps something to eat. He’s a human ruin of hitlerian fantasies who looks up to his older brother, a former German soldier, and is manipulated by a vampire-like teacher who holds the nazi spirit in his conscience. The children reject him in a symbol of rebirth: the new Germany doesn’t wish to play with the old one. 

A scene from Ken Loach’s masterpiece, Kes (1969), shows a similar effect in the individual, but it isn’t soccer that destroys Billy’s illusions but actually the conditions of the educational system and a culture which considers abuse as part of raising the young. As Billy and his classmates pretend they’re the Manchester United and the Tottenham Spurs, their abusive trainer humiliates them verbally and physically.

Yet Loach himself would give soccer a more positive image in Looking for Eric (2009). Facing a series of crises which include a preying gang of criminals, a Manchester United fan is aided by an imaginary version of the philosophic footballer Eric Cantona. Of course, he’s just a reflection of the main character’s consciousness, also called Eric. Thus, the film doesn’t tell us much about the star as an adviser or an infallible role model but of an inner strength trying to find a representation in order to change everything. Aided by the local following of the Manchester United team, Eric finally finds respite. In the thickest night the floodlights at the stadium tell us where to catch a pass and, with a little technique, perhaps score a goal.