Ted's Polish-Mexican Page

A copy of the DVD The Miracle Match arrived at my doorstep the other day. This movie was originally called The Game of their Lives, and recieved a lot of buzz in soccer fan circles four years ago when a preview of it was shown at MLS Cup (another movie previewed for fans at that game: Shaolin Soccer). Release was delayed after one of the production companies involved folded, but it did manage an extremely limited release in a few cities. It has finally been released on DVD with a new name, although oddly enough, the name The Game of Their Lives is still up over the closing credits, and the original promotional website still is up too.

The name change could have been due to the fact that this is the second movie released over the past few years with that name. The other one was a documentary released in 2002 that had a similar theme: it was about the North Korean team that beat Italy at the 1966 World Cup.

This movie is about United States team that beat England at the 1950 World Cup (gosh, did I ruin the ending?), based on Geoffrey Douglas's book. The squad was a rag tag group of amateur players that included a hearse driver and two mailmen. Yep, a group of scrappy underdogs finds out something great about themselves and achieves victory, sounds like, I dunno, Hoosiers. Oh, the box says "From the creators of Hoosiers..."

I liked the movie, cheesy, but you want movies like this to be cheesy. The soccer scenes are actually pretty good too. The opening scene is actually at the 2004 MLS all star game, and features, of all people, Fox Sports commentator Sean Wheelock playing a, I know this is a stretch, an eager soccer reporter. Wheelock's daughter is also in the scene.

Some of the actors in the movie are actual players. Former Miami Fusion player Nelson Vargas plays John "Clarkie" Sousa and Derk Droze, whose MLS career was spotty but had success in Denmark, has a role as well. Scottish-born Ed McIlvenny is played by former DC United player John Harkes. Harkes has only two lines in the whole film, one of which ("Horse poppy it is...") he blows with a nearly comical Scottish (generic British, really) accent. You'd think his time with Sheffield Wednesday would have helped him out a wee bit with this.

Interestingly, since retirement, Harkes and Droze have played with amateur club Hollywood United with Anthony LaPaglia and Vinnie Jones.

The thing that was funny for me was Jimmy Jean-Louis playing Haitian immigrant Joe Gaetjens. Jean-Louis is familiar to fans of the show Heroes where he plays a character known as "The Haitian." See a pattern here? By the way, Jean-Louis has also played for Hollywood United.

The thing I find funny is that although Gaetjens was half-black, he is always described him as "light skinned." The only pictures I have seen of the guy have been black and white, so it is hard for me to judge, but he seems no more dark skinned than his Italian-American teammates. But hey, with all of the black characters in novels that magically get transformed into white ones when those novels get made into movies, it is about time it happens the other way.

Gaetjens was described as "quirky" and "enthusiastic" by his teammates (Walter Bahr said he was "a little cuckoo"). In the movie, they make him heavilly into voodoo. I don't know if this was the case (I saw no reference to it in Douglas's book). They have scenes of Gaetjens doing prayers before the game. I told my friend Prairie Rose Clayton that I thought they laid this on thick, and she said, "Yeah, if he was a 'keeper, I could see it."

(Gaetjen's goal, by the way, wasn't a fluke. He went on to score well over half the goals for his otherwise dismal team, Brookhattan, and was picked up by French team Racing Club of Paris.)

My favorite player from that squad, center-half Charlie "Gloves" Colombo, is played by Costas Mandylor. And yes, he wears the gloves. Mandylor played when he was younger, but an injury forced him to stop. Manylor's brother, Louis, plays Gino Pariani.

Former Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale plays Stanley Mortensen. They make him an arrogant ass, which fits in perfectly with the attitude that the English approached this tournament with.

There are a couple of details that only geeks like me would care about. They portray the team playing, and losing badly, to an England XI team that consisted of players that the movie notes, weren't good enough to play for the national team that they would face in Brazil. The trouble is, they actually held the England XI to only one goal in an impressive performance by Frank Borghi. The team that spanked them on their pre-cup warm-up was actually Turkish side Besitkas, who shellacked them 5-0. This was probably necessary for story telling though.

At one point in the movie, Bahr, played by Wes Bentley, convinces the team to play a 4-4-2. The team actually played a 2-3-5. I only note this because the formation was considered antiquated, and the lack of knowledge of the latest tactics was one of the reasons the team wasn't taken seriously.

Then, we come to the World Cup. The England game is portrayed as the first game that the team played. It was actually the second, the first was a game against Spain, which the US led 1-0 until a late game turnover by Colombo causes the wheels to come off and Spain made a comeback and won 2-1. The performance by the team in this game is what probably gave them the confidence to defeat an arrogant England squad.

The detail of Stanley Matthews taking himself off of England's roster is correct, he took the day off to "rest" on one of Rio's beaches. This was read as a sign that neither England's coach or players took this game seriously and believed that they could ride through the tournament easilly.

The details of the game itself are correct. I won't totally ruin the movie for you.

Aside from all that, I thought it was a fun movie and it was too bad it didn't get wider release.

Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.