“There was a little fraternity that would gather around the swimming pool every day where everybody kind of got to know one another,” recalls Jefferies. He came from Dortmund, having just witnessed his beloved Liverpool beat Deportivo Alaves 5-4 in the final of the UEFA Cup at the Westfalenstadion, completing a unique domestic and European cup treble. It was May 2001 and Jefferies had travelled back to Cannes, where as a newcomer to film he had been immersing himself in the Cannes Film Festival “doing research”. Goal!’s genesis goes back more than 15 years, and has its roots in a real-life football blockbuster. Hence, the relationship between the film’s two major stakeholders-the filmmakers and the football clubs-became a symbiotic exchange of access for exposure. The authorities-that is to say, the game’s self-appointed guardians, be they administrative in Switzerland or commercial in the US–had a message to spread. Goal! was aimed, at least from a marketing perspective, at those developing football markets where there was not already a rushing tide of interest fuelled by a thriving football league and more than a century of associated culture. Considering the high esteem in which English football holds itself, that is hardly surprising. The film has been held in mixed regard in the UK. But if you did, it would look something like this. It’s a narrative dripping in cliche from the moment Nunez is spotted playing street soccer by English former-pro-turned-L.A.-mechanic Glen Foy, to the injury-time winner at the season’s finale that catapults the American wonderkid and his team into the Champions League.
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