17 Jul 2010

THE DAMNED UNITED


England has failed to qualify for the World Cup, a football nation is in crisis. Don Revie the ruthless architect of a new kind of football has been called from Leeds to manage the England team.

His arch enemy, quick talking Brian Clough, has been asked into replace him at Leeds.

Will this result in a car crash of epic but entertaining proportions? Could be.

An excellent piece of drama and a reminder of the down to heal reality of the land that time forgot, Britain in the 1970s.

Good, good, good, you have to watch this. I vaguely (mis?) remembered Brian Clough as an alcoholic loud mouth, got this wrong the hombre was a poet.

Michael Sheen is good as Cloughie, also enjoyed him as Kenneth Williams, another tortured 70s genius.

Nice reminder of football before mega bucks destroyed the game. A drama set today would all be about bankrupt teams sliding under.

Clough was committed socialist, who supported strikers and did his bit to fight the far right National Front.

OTHER OPINIONS
'The Damned United is the best movie ever made about football, wonderfully evoking the sport of the 1970s, which feels a world away from the hype and commercialisation of the modern game.' is the judgement of Diary of a Ledger.

K-Punk suggests ''The Premiership terminated this, finally destroyed what was left of Clough’s crumbling world - a world in which working class managers could outwit and overcome puffed-up patrician patriarchs, a world in which unfancied provincial clubs could outdo the established colossuses - and his final decline was all-too punctual. With Clough an ailing Lear at the helm, Forest were relegated in 1993, at the end of the Premier League's first season.'

Good but.... suggests Makootz. This kind of stuff is probably as exotic as Godard for American viewers so we will let him off.

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