Celebrate the World Cup with our pick of the best football-films

Enjoy the football, even when there's no match on.

The World Cup is in full swing and while we’re spending most of our time watching matches and trying to pronounce players’ names, any spare time is also spent on football related pursuits. Whether it’s covering the house and car in flags, cooking up a storm on the barbeque or trying to fit one more beer in the fridge (even if that means removing anything remotely healthy looking.) So what do you do on those evenings when there are no matches on? Put that flat screen to good use and stick on a football-themed film.

A game that so many people feel so passionately about is hard to capture in film, and so most football movies follow a youngster desperate to meet one of his heroes or become a star player. You’ll never get the excitement that a live match brings, so if it’s not a young protégé it’s a gang of violent fans the focus falls on. But our top footie film has nothing to do with either of these; in fact it’s the most ridiculous, and therefore the best, one out there. Escape to Victory follows a team made up of prisoners of war in Germany during WWII, led by Michael Caine, who are allowed out to play against a German team. And if that wasn’t good enough it also stars Sylvester Stallone, Max von Sydow, Bobby Moore and Pelé. Win.

Then there’s the Goal! trilogy of films (yes, they made three of them!) in which a young aspiring footballer is offered the chance of a lifetime – a tryout for Newcastle United. He goes from gardener and bus boy to star player in the movie, learning a lot about English football culture along the way. And now on to a completely different culture with the awesome Shaolin Soccer. Sing (Stephen Chow) is desperate to teach the world about Kung Fu, and finds a particularly good way to do that is through soccer. He joins a team of equally talented players who go on to battle the ominous Team Evil, who have been taking illegal drugs, and eventually lose. Well worth a look for the moves if not the soccer skills.

British football films seem to be popular, probably due to the violent and obsessive nature of the fans, and our next choice follows one manager both loved and hated. The Damned United follows Brian Clough’s (brilliantly played by Michael Sheen) rise and fall, focussing on his 44 day reign at Leeds United. And if you want something a bit more exciting, try Green Street (or Green Street Hooligans) which stars Elijah Wood as an American student who moves to the UK and ends up part of a firm. But as always he learns from his mistakes and eventually returns to America to go back to Harvard.

More violent and just as ridiculous is Mean Machine, in which Danny (Vinnie Jones) is banned from football for fixing a match. He ends up in prison where he is asked to coach the prison guard team but instead coaches a team of prisoners (including Jason Statham and Danny Dyer) who eventually go on to defeat the guards. Dyer pops up again (he’s good at playing hooligans) in The Football Factory, in which he fights with rival supporters but begins to question his morals – he’s getting too old for fighting.

But if you want something a bit lighter, try Bend it Like Beckham, in which the daughter of a family of orthodox Sikh’s (Parminder Nagra) joins a small football team thanks to her skills and love of the game. Along with Jules (Keira Knightley) she manages to (eventually) convince her parents to let her play and they both get scholarships to play in California. Equally heart-warming, in a totally different way, is Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric in which a depressed postman (Steve Evets) turns his life around with the help of his Eric Cantona (played by Eric Cantona!) hallucinations.

For pure silliness we’ve included Soccer Dog: European Cup in which the dog from Soccer Dog, fresh from defeating some small soccer team, takes on an English team in the European cup – totally ridiculous but still funny. And if none of these float your boat, try When Saturday Comes, Mike Bassett: England Manager, There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble, Fever Pitch or She’s The Man.