Movies You Might Have Missed: Mike Brett and Steve Jamison's Next Goal Wins

Good films about football are as rare as John Jensen goals. The difficulty, above all others, is choreographing the actual matches in a way that doesn’t look entirely staged. There are ways around this: Fever Pitch focused on the nature of fandom while The Damned United took place almost exclusively in boardrooms and dressing rooms.

Next Goal Wins (2014), a documentary about one of the worst international teams in the history of the sport, is one of the great sports films, an inspired and inspiring tale that’s stranger than fiction.

In 2001, American Samoa lost 31-0 to Australia, the worst defeat in international football history and a result that led to headlines all over the world. A decade later and the team are still at the bottom of the Fifa rankings with just two goals scored in 17 years. With qualification for the 2014 World Cup approaching, Dutch coach Thomas Rongen is brought in to try and help turn round the team’s fortunes.

Any documentary lives or dies by its subjects and one has to believe directors Mike Brett and Steve Jamison probably couldn’t believe their luck during the filming. Rongen, a maverick coach who played alongside George Best and Johan Cruyff, is motivated by a personal tragedy that inspires him on a daily basis.

The team’s star defender, a tough tackler in the Vinnie Jones mould, is Jaiyah Saelua. Saelua is a fa’afafine, the third gender specific to Samoan culture. Ultimately this no-nonsense defender becomes the first transgender player ever to compete in a World Cup qualifier, a victory in the truest sense of the word.

For a sports film to work, we have to root for the protagonists. This American Samoa team, though technically anything but gifted, has real guts and a genuine desire to prove they are more than a mere punchline.

Perhaps no figure sums up the team’s indefatigable quite like their goalkeeper, the man between the sticks for the infamous 31-0 hammering. He comes out of retirement for the qualification campaign and is living proof that failure can be character building so long as one doesn’t become completely dispirited.

The football is poor, the country is beautiful and the players are beacons of hope. This is a film about courage in the face of adversity that is more stirring than any big-budget blockbuster.