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.
The first half
The film begins with tryouts in Rome. Allentore/Coach Enrico Zanchini largely runs the show and assesses players, while Santo and former world boxer Vincenzo Cantatore help with warmups and exercises. Players who pass the initial tryout then go through 1 week of practice and training. Only 12 will be selected to play 5v5 games in Japan.
Santo screens the players for their psychiatric conditions: schizophrenia, anxiety, panic attacks, personality disorders, epilepsy, former drug addiction, and/or depression. Voices tell one player that he is nobody. Another player talks about TSO – Obligatory Health Treatment, where patients are tied up in order to be administered medications or to prevent suicide.
The men range in age from 30s to 50s. Some have been on medication or antipsychotics for years, making them tired or sleepy. The coaches try to work the players into fitness in just a week, with daily workouts.
Santo believes the players will benefit from team sports because they will remember the time before they got sick. Awaiting a pass is better than waiting for death or an injection. Perhaps playing sports will reduce the need for medication. And teamwork will also require the players to build relationships, which is a skill many of them have lost.
The second half
In the second half of the film, the players have been picked and they head to Japan. They do a little sightseeing and prepare for the tournament. There are only 4 teams: Italy, Peru, Japan, and Osaka (the host city). The first day is group play in an open but covered facility. It looks pretty cold, and each team plays the other 3 teams in 30 minute games with a halftime. The next day, they hold the Final and Consolation matches.
The Director interviews players and representatives from the Peru and Japan teams. The physical and emotional benefits of playing a team sport are the same, regardless of country. But Japan has an additional goal, which is to destigmatize psychiatric problems. In Japan (Giappone), psychiatric patients are institutionalized and hidden away in asylums. This tournament brings the 2 Japanese teams, who train regularly, out into the open.
Italy starts off slowly, losing to Japan 0-1, but they come back to beat Peru handily. In the 3rd game, their eyes are on making the Final, but #6 Antonio walks off and refuses to play any further. He has been an aggressively critical person throughout, and perhaps Coach Enrico regrets rostering the player for his skill when he was such a negative force. They instead lose to Osaka and play for bronze the next day. Italy’s 4th and final game for the bronze medal versus Peru goes back and forth and comes across as quite exciting.
Although I’ve written this review about the players, really the star of the film is Coach Enrico Zanchini. If you are a coach, there is much to learn from him in the way he talks to the players and tries to develop their emotional, social, and physical skills. In a 2019 interview, Zanchini said he learned to focus the team on conducting themselves like professionals, even though they are amateurs, and that this motivated them.
The soccer
The football footage is short snippets that exemplify action, but I didn’t get a good idea of anyone’s skill level.
When Italy gets their medals, it seems that only 8 of 10 players are on the stand. Perhaps there was more than one annoyingly bad egg in the group. But I have to really credit Coach Enrico and psychiatrist Santo for getting these players to rise to the challenge and play as a team despite issues as grave as psychosis. In that sense, this is a marvelous film and inspirational.
In conclusion
A dramatic TV movie version was produced in 2021 for Italian TV. Crazy for Football also held another world cup in 2018. The pandemic appears to have derailed some things, but it appears they may still be in operation. Italy won a Dream Euro Cup in 2024, which they may have hosted. Zanchini emphasized in his interview that without good media exposure, they can’t get funding. Without funding, they can’t pay for travel or organize events like tryouts. The movie mentions that Psychiatrist Rullo mortgaged his house to help fund the inaugural trip.
In Coach Enrico’s interview, he said that 1/3 of participants recover fully and 1/3 stay in treatment with good margins for healing. I have researched quite a few homeless world cup films, and my feeling is that their success rates probably pale in comparison. Of course, they are dealing with homelessness in addition to psychosis and drug use. None of the Crazy for Football participant appear to be homeless, which implies they have some personal support such as family.
The benefits of the Crazy for Football program seem clear to me. Perhaps this film could inspire someone to start a Crazy for Football project in the USA.
8 Soccer Movie Mom Rating = 8
Resources:
- Released: 2017-02-17 (Italy)
- Full title is Crazy for Football: The Craziest World Cup
- Italian title could be Matti per il calcio
- 1 hr 15 mins
- In Italian with English sub-titles
- I watched this on Netflix while in Europe
- IMDB
- WIKI
- Director: Volfango De Biasi
- Stars: Psychiatrist Santo Rullo , Coach Enrico Zanchini
- Watch the Trailer in Italian (3 mins)
- Watch the Trailer in Italian (1 min)
- Websites for
- the inaugural Dream World Cup webpage
- the subsequent Crazy for Football NT project
- The Dream World Cup homepage has not been updated since 2020
