Movie Review: Next Goal Wins

The new movie “Next Goal Wins” is another one of those inspirational sports stories that would never work, unless this was a true story.

For reasons that are a mystery for most American sports fans, Soccer is a sport that is very big in the rest of the world, never in the United States. Even though this sport is so mind-bendingly and unbelievably boring, people around the world go crazy watching this sport. Despite all of this, you have to respect the athletes who run around a huge field, back and forth, trying to use their feet and head to score a goal – something that rarely happens in most soccer matches. The typical score of a soccer game is normally 1-0.

Early on in this story, the history of the American Somoa International Soccer team – including an incredible 32-0 loss in 2001 to Australia is mentioned, as well as the fact that the international Samoa team never even scored 1 goal in the entire history of the soccer team. Then a down on his luck, recently fired and frequently drunk soccer coach Thomas Rongen, played by Michael Fassbender is forced to take the worst coaching job in international soccer – the coach of the worst team in history – American Samoa.

When Rongen arrives in Somoa, he is introduced to bad surroundings, a run-down team facility, and a group of out-of-shape and broken-down group of soccer players. There is no doubt that turning a team like this around is impossible, but somehow Rongen, even though he is either drunk or drinking most of the time, manages to slowly improve the team.

One of the most important members of the team is the first transgender international soccer player Jaiyah, played by Kaimana. At first there are some major conflicts between Rongen and Jaiyah, that over time are resolved through conversation and understanding – one of the best parts of this film.

There is nothing new within this typical sports story, we have all seen movies like this before – including an ending soccer game that was completly expected. Unfortunately this movie will probably be out of the theaters in about 2 weeks, due to the very low and incorrect 41% Rotten Tomatoes rating. This movie is about a 70% with a very marginal recommendation, mainly due to the acting and overall message.