Weekly Poll Results: Best Soccer Movie

Posted by on July 8th, 2010   Filed under: Polls

Well I suppose the winner of last week’s poll was a pretty obvious one, and I can’t really argue with it: Stephen Chow’s Shaolin Soccer managed to capture nearly 35% of the votes. As far as the best “serious” soccer movie goes, however, it looks like Victory starring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Max von Sydow and Pelé is the fan favourite. Bend it like Beckham, The Damned United and Goal: The Dream Begins were the other top vote getters. As for the bottom 5, unfortunately, they didn’t get many votes at all… I’m assuming that’s probably because a lot of people haven’t seen them. Do you agree with the results? Are there any other decent soccer movies that people should know about?

1. Shaolin Soccer — 34.6%
2. Victory / Escape to Victory — 16.4%
3. Bend it like Beckham — 15%
4. The Damned United — 13.6%
5. Goal: The Dream Begins — 7%
6. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait — 5.1%
7. Looking for Eric — 3.3%
8. Rudo y Cursi — 2.8%
9. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos — 1.9%
10. Gracie — 0.5%



  • What about Mean Machine (2001) and/or Green Street Hooligans (2005). Not traditional soccer films but goon none the less.

  • Kvl

    IMO Emir Kusturica’s documentary about Maradona should have been included in the poll.

  • Cormac

    Two films worth catching:
    **The Other Final – a documentary about an alternative World Cup Final between Monserrat and Bhutan, then the two worst teams in the world. A really beautiful, funny, uplifting film, and one of my all-time favorites.
    **The Cup – another film about Bhutan. A nice tale of young monks trying to get to watch the world cup final.

    Otherwise that poll looks pretty spot on.

  • Doug Henning’s Bastard Son

    Andre Pope is right. Mean Machine = Pure Vinnie Jones magic.

    Another, if I may is “There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble”.

    I think Greg would go with Formula 51. Am I right ?

  • Xu

    I love love loved Kusturica’s Maradona documentary, in fact, I deliberately rewatched 2 songs in that movie before the Argentina VS Germany match……

  • paul

    Its clearly Green Street Hooligans

  • Liney

    Mark my words: the greatest football film of all time (when they make it – probably in about ten years time when he dies from an inevitable premature death) will be the the life story of Paul Gascoigne. I can’t think of anyone else in any walk of life (including people such as Hunter S Thompson and Dennis Hopper) for whom there are more crazy and/or funny anecdotes about. A film would be amazing. Especially if made by Michael Winterbottom in the style of “24 Hour Party People”.

  • Zoo

    Gotta add Kicking and Screaming to the list.

    For those that don’t know, Mean Machine was a remake of another football movie, The Longest Yard.