Very Cool!!!

The greatest movie ever!

Perfectly adorable

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Next Goal Wins follows the American Samoa football team through their world cup qualifying games. They are famous for their record 31-0 defeat to Australia and being the worst team in the world. You really don't have to like football at all to enjoy this excellent documentary. It has a host of natural but great personalities and it is refreshing to see people playing sport for the right reasons. It was nice to see the culture of the American Samoans which seems a lot more welcoming than many western cultures. The fact that no-one seemed to playing up to the camera at all is a credit to all participants.I really enjoyed this uplifting and at times tear jerking documentary and highly recommend it to non football and football fans alike.

In 2001 American Samoa lost 31–0 to Australia. It was the worst defeat in international football. Things have not been much better for the American Samoa team since then. To qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup potential salvation comes in the unlikely form of Thomas Rongen, an American based Dutch soccer coach.He commits for one month to give the team a fighting chance. During this brief period he focus on achievable tactics, fitness, a better defence as well as organising training sessions around the part time footballers. He also finds a couple of non island recruits who are of American Samoan heritage. Their form has been so bad that scoring a goal would be a bit of an achievement. It turns out that Rongen also has a personal tragedy to overcome.The film also focuses on Jaiyah (Johnny) Saelua, a member of the team since 2003 but is the first trans-gender player to compete in a men's FIFA World Cup qualifier and is wholly accepted by the team. Samoan culture has a different attitude to trans-gender than in the west. We also see the unfortunate goalkeeper who let in all the goals against Australia.Its a classic underdog and uplifting story but done in a minor key. Its nice to see football at the other end of the spectrum without overpaid prima donnas but for me the documentary was too formulaic and manipulative.

This documentary chartering the preparations of American Samoa for the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers has little to do with the beautiful game. It's a story of redemption, of solidarity, of family and community, and of believing in yourself. A true David and Goliath tale, there are further nuances that make "Next Goal Wins" stand above many other documentaries. For one, there's Saelua, a transgender woman on the American Samoan team who plays harder than her male teammates, and her wholehearted acceptance and support by everyone on the island. Then there's Thomas Rongan, the Dutch coach who volunteers to come and help prepare the team, while he continues to grieve over the death of his daughter in a car accident. I won't say anymore about the characters or what happens, but I will say that this story is truly inspiring and uplifting, and more than that, has made me question my own attitude, work ethic and beliefs in the weeks since I watched it, and I am very grateful.

Next Goal Wins is a documentary about football/soccer, which came out in the year of the Brazilian World Cup, where the greatest footballing nations in the world come together for the biggest festival of the sport in the world; at the other end of that spectrum we have American Samoa – the team famous for the 31-0 defeat they suffered at the hands of Australia in 2001. This is the story of a tiny country with a national team of amateurs who work full- time jobs around their practice sessions as they prepare for the World Cup qualifiers against a backdrop of never having won a competitive match in their history, and only having scored twice in the last 17 years.Like almost everyone else that talks about this film, I will struggle to write more than a sentence before I contrast this film with the FIFA World Cup because, although they are the same sport, they are at polar extremes to one another in terms of content. I'll also do what a lot of people have done, and reference the wonderful John Oliver bit on HBO where he tore FIFA's approach apart at a time where the corruption and lack of ability to do anything about it was also hurting how people felt about the body. Of course the World Cup was still a great success because people love the sport even if they universally hate the organizing body. This film strikes wonderfully at the nerve because it is about love of the sport, about trying despite the odds and, on a bigger scale, about people and a community.The film does have a weakness in that it knows all this and as a result it perhaps plays towards it a bit too obviously at times; structuring itself in an effective manner sure, but I could have done with a few fewer moments of music coming in and people talking about courage and such. That said, it is hard not to do this because all the things are in place here – we have great characters, a unique setting and a wonderful sense of enjoyment (which the film brings out in this way). It helps to not know anything about the end point of the film (I didn't) but in the end it doesn't really matter because it is the ride and effort that is the fun part and even if you do not care about the sport, the film wisely picks its characters so that you care about specific people and thus the whole.It is hard not to feel nervous as the team head towards another game – sometimes with the goal of just not losing too badly – and this increases as the new coach tries to pull them together. It is also hard not to be moved by the presence of transgender Jaiyah and the history made there – again, with all the headlines at the time reminding us that one of the next tournaments will be in Qatar, where Jaiyah would not find the welcome that she finds in her community, team and sport. It is hard not to be really moved at times because the film, although a bit too heavy at times, is generally very good at building all this together and putting it on the field.It is a small story and it falls so totally outside of Brazil 2014 that it can more than serve as a refreshing documentary that has a great underdog story (there is no lower) and delivers it with strong characters and a sense of joy.