Word: soccering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Among Manchester United Football Club's 300 million or so supporters worldwide are two Burmese men whose love of the game spans generations. One is a stout, bespectacled, betel nut - chewing septuagenarian, the other his favorite teenage grandson, and like many of their soccer-mad compatriots they stay up late into Burma's tropical nights to watch live broadcasts from faraway England. So far, so normal. But knowing the grandfather in this touching scene is Senior General Than Shwe, the xenophobic chief of Burma's junta, makes it seem all wrong. Rabidly anti-Western, yet pro-Wayne Rooney, is this...
...1970s, Brian Clough was one of the best-known figures in Britain. A talented soccer player whose career was cut short by injury, he went into management, leading not one but two unfashionable clubs to the English championship and then winning the European Cup two years in a row. He was a clever, cocky, working-class hero with an opinion on everything from Margaret Thatcher (against) to striking miners (for). Brilliant, needy, self-destructive - he was an alcoholic and had a liver transplant before he died in 2004 - he combined humor, bombast, friendships and rivalries in a long and very...
...Clough is barely known outside Britain, and The Damned United is unlikely to get a wide release. That's a shame; great though Sheen's Blair and Frost were, his Clough is of an even higher order, combining psychological insight with dead-on accuracy. (See TIME's photo-esay "Soccer in the Time of Swine...
...ensuing preoccupation with Revie explains many of Clough’s actions throughout the rest of the film. Like Paul Ashworth in “Fever Pitch” (1997; not the Jimmy Fallon movie about the Red Sox), Clough is consumed by soccer to the detriment of his mental and physical health and the well-being of those around him. But the true emotional and thematic centerpiece of “The Damned United” is the relationship between Clough and his assistant manager, Peter Taylor (brilliantly played by Timothy Spall, best known for his role as Peter...
...Damned United,” by the mere nature of its theme, is unlikely to attract American audiences. Despite the growing interest in soccer in this country, a film about Leeds United in the 1970s, featuring faded stars whose names are now familiar only to Leeds fans, is a minor enthusiasm. After their explorations of epochal moments in British and American history in “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon,” this is a decidedly quiet triumph from Peter Morgan and Michael Sheen. Yet it underscores their masterful ability to bring characters...