Cinematography:
Steve JamisonComposer:
Roger GoulaCast:
Thomas Rongen, Jaiyah Saelua, Nicky Salapu, Gene Ne'emia, Larry Mana'o, Rawlston Masaniai, Charles UhrlePlots(1)
In 2001, the tiny Pacific island of American Samoa suffered a world record 31-0 defeat at the hands of Australia, garnering headlines across the world as the worst football team on the planet. A decade after that humiliating night, they remain rooted to the bottom of FIFA's World rankings, having scored only twice in seventeen years. They have lost every competitive game they have ever played. Against this backdrop of serial underachievement, the team face the daunting prospect of a qualification campaign for the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil. It would take a miracle-maker or a madman to turn the team's fortunes around - and in maverick Dutch coach Thomas Rongen the islanders somehow find both. As a loan appointment from the mighty U.S. Soccer Federation, with experience of playing alongside football greats like George Best and Johann Cruyff, Rongen is completely unprepared for what greets him on the island - in his own words it is "by far the lowest standard" of football he's ever seen, with only half of his team even fit enough to play a whole game.
A lack of athleticism to one side, Thomas' ailing squad contains the emotionally scarred goalkeeper who conceded 31 goals against Australia a decade earlier and a member of Samoa's third gender, the fa'fafine, who lives 24/7 as a woman. To complicate matters further the team's best player has been posted 6000 miles away by the US military. With the team about to embark on a gruelling World Cup Qualification campaign, Rongen has just one month to transform this ragtag of losers into a winning team - and perhaps learn a little about himself along the way. (KinoSmith)
(more)Reviews (2)
US Samoa is (was?) a synonym for an outsider of all outsiders. A team that almost never scored in an official match and almost never got any points, precisely did quite the opposite and regularly concede so many goals that the results of the team gave the impression that these are the match results of a completely different sport than football. And to make matters worse, it is also the team with the highest defeat in an interstate match ever in history. But its football chairman has a long-time dream; namely, nothing less than to be at least once place not on the last position of FIFA ranking... The best thing about this documentary is that no matter how ultimate feel good movie and no matter that it is an advertisement of the unbreakable team spirit, it doesn't in any way seem like a fabricated movie that is obviously fishing for emotions. After all, it can't even do that, because the authors could hardly count on such a development at the beginning of their documentary about the “worst team in history". And especially in the first half, you can see in which direction their original intentions were moving, before they were lucky enough to get the incredibly important characters and their incredible story both on a purely sporting level and, above all, on a personal level.
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If hockey has its Miracle, football’s hot candidate for that is American Samoa. Next Goal Wins is the best sports documentary since the unrivaled Senna and the best underdog’s rise to fame story since Forrest Gump. Incredibly inspiring with a guaranteed feel-good atmosphere.
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