Why do football scenes always look so bad in movies?
The cinematic medium has proven to be solid grounds for the realm of sports, ranging from boxing to tennis. However, while the likes of Rocky and Challengers have arrived with brilliant recreations of their respective sports when it comes to the good old game of football, there seems to be a lack of overall quality when producing moments of sporting brilliance.
There have, of course, been many football movies made over the years, such as 1981’s Escape to Victory, the Goal trilogy of the 2000s, Bend It Like Beckham, and even the martial arts mashup Shaolin Soccer. While such films have their own respective merits, for the most part, the actual scenes in which goals are scored, opponents dribbled past, and tackles crunched into seem to distinctively look so damn bad.
There are a handful of reasons for football movies’ poor quality sporting scenes, though, beginning with the overall lack of realism on the pitch. After all, professional football is played by highly trained athletes with an undoubted skill at kicking the ball. In hiring actors to play such sporting figures, even those who indeed show prowess with a ball at their feet, the movements of the professional can never quite be captured in any sense of authenticity.
In addition, football is a game that unfolds naturally with an infinite-seeming series of split decisions being made on the spot. By contrast, football movies have to be choreographed, which is diametrically opposed to the spontaneous nature of what actually occurs on the pitch. By needing to capture each moment on camera from the same level as the action, football movie scenes adopt an air of falseness that leaves a peculiar taste in the mouths of audiences.
Continuing down that vein, when a live football is captured for television broadcast, it is mostly done so from an aerial view, with a handful of mid-to-close-up shots from a range of different angles being used for replays. The overhead angle allows for the entire game to be shown seamlessly, but a football movie just looks too fake and scripted with its reliance on close-up choreography.
Of course, it’s also often the case that football movies have narrative routes that coexist alongside their sporting moments. While such storylines add to the overall quality of football films, the truth is that they can detract filmmakers from making football scenes realistic due to time and budget constraints, with the focus mostly on the key moments of a match, which glorifies the sport itself, rather than allow for it to unfold naturally with all its tedium and tension.
In the likes of Goal and Bend It Like Beckham, goals scored take on a surreal quality that makes them feel like they’ve barely occurred. Tackles are evaded far too easily, goalkeepers dive for the ball laughable too late and watch as the ball nestles in the net behind them, and there’s a shocking amount of time allowed on the ball that wouldn’t happen in even the lowest quality of a Sunday league match.
By contrast, consider the 2006 documentary film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, which focuses solely on the legendary French football player Zinedine Zidane during a 90-minute match. Even with the closeup shots, one can tell the authentic nature of Zidane’s game, which is a far cry from the kind of over-produced, CGI-reliant works of the fictional football movie genre.
Football movies are indeed a fun venture and they provide emotional and thoughtful insights into the beautiful game with focuses on the heartbreak and dedication beyond the limits of the pitch. But unfortunately, it’s been an absolute rarity that a filmmaker has ever been able to succinctly capture the intensity of an actual game, which turns out be the real impossible job.
