Next Goal Wins

Director: Taika Waititi (UK, USA). Year of Release: 2023

Next Goal Wins opens with a mystic, played by director Taika Waititi, with a comedy moustache and unbelievable accent. The mystic spends way too much time telling us that the story he’s about to tell is largely true with some embellishments. It’s very laboured and doesn’t really work. Your heart sinks at the prospect of a film which spends way too much time explaining the story at hand, rather than just showing us what happens and trusting our ability to make our own minds up.

We are introduced to the American Samoan football team, and in particular their record 31-0 defeat to Australia in the World Cup qualifiers. Then we meet Thomas Rongen, a Dutch-US American “soccer” coach, who was once a successful manager, but has increasingly been dragged down with alcohol and anger management issues. His bosses – who include his ex-wife – offer him a job managing American Samoa, almost as an intervention (“we sent you there to help you”).

It’s 4 weeks till the World Cup qualifiers, and American Samoa aren’t even able to put together a coherent Haka, let alone a halfway decent football performance. The players are generally overweight and out of condition. After the 31-0 loss, everyone who was Any Good went into retirement, including goalkeeper Nicky Salapu, who may have let 31 goals in, but he saved twice as many. Thomas’s task is not to win a game but to get his team to score a goal.

The president of the American Samoa football federation, Tavita, motivates his players by telling them that he’s made a bet with the other presidents that if American Samoa fail to score, then the other presidents can draw pairs of breasts on Tavita’s face. In permanent ink. Yes, we are really at this level of joke. It’s as if this were the movie version of a 1970s British Sitcom, but the film company has introduced quality control to ensure that no joke is too hard to understand.

This level of whimsy means that most of the jokes which are so obvious and unfunny that you worry about the writers. Thomas is sacked after watching a PowerPoint presentation about the five stages of grief. As he shows each stage, the relevant text is projected onto the screen behind him. There’s nothing offensive about this – quite the reverse. It is more that we know exactly what is going to happen long before it appears on screen.

Thomas is all washed up, and – we learn later – has never got over the death of his daughter who died in a car crash (a rare note of real tragedy in a film which prefers to look at the lighter side of grief). He puts up photos of his daughter in his new accomodation, and listens to voice messages which she sent him some time in the past. Thomas still wears a wedding ring, even though his wife is now clearly carrying on with his boss, and has long since stopped wearing her own ring.

One of the team, Jaivah, is transitioning to be a woman. She is still eligible to pass the intrusive hormone tests applied by sporting bodies, but knows that she will sooner or later be no longer allowed to play for the men’s team. In a film which contains all sorts of unlikely episodes, Jaivah’s story is entirely true, and based on the first open trans person to compete in a World Cup qualifier. Now that would have been a film which is way more serious and sensitive than what we see here.

Unfortunately, Next Goal Wins is not that film. Jaiva is treated so much as the film’s moral soul, that she is ceaselessly patronised. When Thomas deadnames her and asks intrusive questions about her sexual organs, she accepts the insults, and even apologises, while she asks him to carry on managing the team. This is not a film in which anyone is allowed to get angry. Subjects which should invoke rage are used to wryly show us how peculiar people can be.

The main message of Next Goal Wins is that we shouldn’t be so competitive, that football is just a game, and that we shouldn’t care if we win or lose. But this is where it tries to have its cake and eat it. To get its point across, the film is absolutely dependent on American Samoa not just scoring a goal but on winning a game. Not every game, but at least one. Because it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, just as long as you make sure that you win something.

All laughs are prepared with the broadest of brushstrokes, and little time is spent developing character. So, there’s the affable head honcho of American Samoan football, who introduces Thomas to the island’s strange customs. There’s the spiritual player who spends 10 seconds praying before he takes a shot. There’s Nicky, the goalkeeper who is lured out of retirement, because however fucked up his life might be, he’s not as big a loser as Thomas.

Perhaps what’s most surprizing about this second rate film is the amount of talent that’s on show. The jury is out on Taika Waititi, in my house at least, but lookee here – there’s Michael Fassbender. And isn’t that Elisabeth Moss? Next Goal Wins has all the structure of a Cool Runnings-type unlikely winner Sports movie, but without any of the style. It is too pleased with itself. And yet It has enough of a sense of fun for me to not hold that entirely against it.

Many critics have given Next Goal Wins a bit of a kicking, and while the film is simplistic and sentimental, and contains few surprizes, it is so good-natured that I find it hard to wish it any ill. Especially as the trailer highlights all the prizes which director Taika Waikiki failed to win (though maybe we should look at some of the reasons for his failures. Let’s face it, a comedy about Hitler was never a great idea).

There is a joke early on about white saviour plots, which you presume is to inoculate the film against similar charges. But this a film who’s story is how the white male lead discovers himself after he is exposed to a less competitive culture. But it is also about how the “other” culture must learn a little competition. For all its apparent subversiveness, Next Goal Wins does little to scare the horses. While I find it hard to feel contempt for it, I find it hard to feel anything at all.