Category: Documentary
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Football Confessions of a Hatchet Man – ‘Untold UK: Vinnie Jones’ (2026)
As part of its buildup for WC 2026, Netflix has released a few shows created for Untold UK. Two of them are quite similar rags to riches stories: that of Jamie Vardy and Vinnie Jones. Had they not been footballers, they would have been factory workers or bricklayers. Both films are excellent, but Vinnie’s documentary…
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A short-term worlds-greatest phenom — ‘Ronaldinho: The One and Only’ (2026)
Ronaldinho: The One and Only, the Netflix 3-part series about the iconic Brazilian player, is entertaining enough that my hubby watched the whole thing — almost 3 hours.
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WTF went wrong – ‘The Bus: A French Football Mutiny’ (2026)
Le Bus: Les Bleus en grève gives us insider information on the truly catastrophic disaster that was France at WC 2010 in South Africa.
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Enthralling — ‘Untold UK: Jamie Vardy’ (2026)
Part of the Netflix Untold series, the Jamie Vardy story took a very long time to get to our screens. It’s been over a decade since he beat 5000:1 odds and put Leicester City FC at the top of the Premier League.
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Review – ‘Luva de Pedreiro: Viral Moves’ (2024)
Humble beginnings and great success can lead to a lucrative career, flashpoint burnout, or both. This is a fascinating 3-episode docuseries about Brazilian football influencer Luva de Pedreiro (real name Iran Ferreira), who rocketed to fame, flamed out at high altitude, and then came back.
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Adebayo Akinfenwa’s post-playing career in ‘Beast Mode On’ (2022)
6’1″ and 229 pounds, Adebayo Akinfenwa was a beast of a striker, able to bench press twice his considerable weight. On a soccer scale, it would be like seeing Mean Joe Green or the Refrigerator (William Perry) run at you. Like, where can you hide? And yet, until this documentary, I had never heard of…
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Sorry JD Vance, but ‘SheBelongs’ on the pitch (2024)
A link to the free showing of the movie #SheBelongs showed up in my google alerts. I wasn’t sure it would be worth watching because the film had no IMDB or TMDB or Letterboxd entries. It had no reviews. I found press releases about the film and its organizers, Refugee Soccer, and it appeared to…
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‘Copa 71’ (2023) preserves the history we did not know
A benefit of having Serena Williams as an executive on your movie is that your film gets a lot of attention, and in this case, a lot of movie reviews. The reviews for Copa 71 are all quite glowing, and I certainly agree this sports documentary is important for showing a piece of female football…
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‘Crazy for Football’ (2017) – a cure for psychosis?
Psychiatrist Santo Rullo had always wanted to coach football, and his opportunity came when the Italian Federation helped him take a team to Osaka, Japan. The team consisted of psychiatric patients, who competed in the 2016 Futsal World Cup for people with mental disability, a joint project with several Japanese psychiatrists.
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Football builds community in ‘Las Leonas’ (2022)
Las Leonas is an 8v8 tournament in Rome, where 6 recreational-level womens teams give their all on a small soccer pitch. They are almost all immigrants in Italy, and are mostly from South America. These women in the 30s and 40s play football on their only day off in the week. It gives them community…
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A struggle to play ‘Home Games’ in Kyiv (2018)
The documentary Home Games (Домашні ігри) follows a young woman in 2016 while she struggles to take care of her 6 and 7 year old siblings while pursuing a path to professional football in the Ukraine. Football has been Alina Shilova’s only escape from the poverty of her daily life, and her dream is to…
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![My New Favorite Futbolista (2022) [a review]](https://soccermoviemom.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/my-new-favorite-futbolista-thumbnail.png)
My New Favorite Futbolista (2022) [a review]
My New Favorite Futbolista is an 8-episode TV series that you can only watch on PeacockTV. Ahead of WC 2022, it profiles inspiring footballers and their off-field commitments where they advocate for change or support important causes.
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‘Zizou the Great’ (2009) a footballer film with no football
Condolences to you if you subscribed to Peacock or Apple TV just to watch Zizou the Great: The Zinedine Zidane Story, an unauthorized Australian documentary about one of the greatest French players. This documentary is so unauthorized that it has absolutely no match footage. If you watch the trailer, that is pretty much the entire…
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When love of football lands you in jail – ‘The Football Aficionado’ (2022)
When a sport is global, modern parts of the world have decided that societal rules of anti-discrimination should apply to all countries. Thus, FIFA has the power to ban nations from the World Cup if their federations allow homophobic or racist chants in stadiums or preclude women from attending games. While FIFA has this power,…
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‘#SeAcabó’ (2024) is a diary of champions
Whether you remember this Netflix documentary as #SeAcabó: Diario de las campeonas or as the English title It’s All Over: The kiss that changed Spanish football, you should remember one thing. These women rose as one above president Luis Rubiales of the Spanish Federation and his underlings. And if you want to see how the…
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Review: ‘An Invisible Victim – The Eliza Samudio Case’ (2024)
Categorized as a True Crime film, the Brazilian documentary A Vítima Invisível: O Caso Eliza Samúdio is really more of a tragedy. A story like this makes me wonder if victims will ever receive justice. Or will celebrities always be able to get away with their crimes, even murder?
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‘Untold: Hope Solo vs US Soccer’ (2024) or Hope Solo vs Herself?
In many ways, Hope Solo is a duplicate of the Tonya Harding story. Both athletes were products of the non-conformist Pacific Northwest, had a non-nurturing home life, were fatherless, and struggled economically. Both were determined not to be defined by their circumstances, but to rise above them and become champions. Of course, the reason you…
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A captivating tale of a youth tournament in ‘Kids Cup’ (‘Bortebane’ 2021)
The documentary Kids Cup (original title is Bortebane) follows 5 young footballers, ages 13-14, as they prepare for, compete, win, and lose in a huge international youth tournament known as the Norway Cup. If you’ve ever played in or taken your child to a travel tournament, as we call it in the USA, you and…
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Netflix shows what makes Club América so popular
Club América touts itself as the winningest club in Mexico. This 5-hour Netflix series is entitled Club América vs. Club América because it compares mainly the 2020-2021 season under Manager Santiago Solari with the club’s over 100 year history. Because if you are at the top, you often compete against yourself and your history.
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![[Review] ‘The Playbook: A Coach’s Rules for Life’ (2020)](https://soccermoviemom.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/the-playbook-2020-thumbnail.jpg)
[Review] ‘The Playbook: A Coach’s Rules for Life’ (2020)
Click on my #Coaching tag, and you’ll see 24 documentary films and series that give insight on soccer coaches at all different levels. The stories range from youth to high school to Liverpool, Leeds, ManU, Barcelona, and Argentina. While I found something to learn in all these films, I highly recommend watching the Netflix series…
