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The underdog sports comedy Next Goal

0:21

Wins is based on the true story of

0:23

American Samoa's soccer team and

0:25

its attempts to improve on its status as

0:27

a worldwide laughingstock.

0:29

The film is from Taika Waititi and

0:31

stars Michael Fassbender as the real life

0:33

coach tasked with helping the team

0:35

compete in a world cup qualifying match. I'm Linda

0:37

Holmes. And I'm Stephen Thompson.

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Today we are talking about Next Goal

0:42

Wins on Pop Culture Happy Hour

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1:55

their

2:00

current obsessions and debate the latest

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in books, TV, film, and pop

2:04

culture. New episodes of Critics

2:06

at Large are released every Thursday

2:09

wherever you get your podcasts.

2:12

Joining us today is one of the hosts of NPR's

2:15

Code Switch podcast, Gene Demby. Hey, Gene.

2:17

What's good, Joe? I'm so glad to be here. Hey, Gene. So

2:21

great to have you. So Next

2:23

Goal Wins is based on the real-life

2:25

exploits of American Samoa's soccer

2:28

team, which experienced embarrassment

2:30

on a global scale when it lost a match

2:33

to Australia by the score of 31-0

2:36

back in 2001. Ten years

2:38

later, as the World Cup qualifiers approached,

2:40

American Samoa looked to improve its slot

2:43

by hiring a down-on-his-luck Dutch-American

2:45

coach named Thomas Rongen. He's

2:47

played by Michael Fassbender. What follows

2:50

will be familiar to anyone who's seen the 2014 documentary,

2:53

also called Next Goal Wins, which documents

2:56

Rongen's attempts to turn the team around.

2:58

But the new film will also be familiar to

3:01

anyone who has ever seen an underdog sports

3:03

movie, be it cool runnings, the mighty ducks,

3:05

or the bad news bears. You take a wacky

3:07

team of misfits, an exasperated coach

3:10

with no other options, and a whole

3:12

lot

3:12

of training montages. You know the drill. Next

3:15

Goal Wins also stars Kamana

3:17

as Jaya, who with Fafafine, an

3:19

American simoan term referring to gender

3:21

fluidity. The real-life Jaya became

3:23

the first openly transgender player

3:25

to compete in a World Cup qualifying match.

3:28

The film was directed and co-written by Taika Waititi

3:31

and is in theaters on Friday. Linda,

3:33

I'm going to start with you. What did you think of Next Goal Wins?

3:35

I really liked this movie. I

3:38

think, as you said, if you have seen an

3:40

underdog sports movie, you're

3:42

going to see just about every beat coming

3:44

at some level. I think they've freely

3:47

fictionalized enough elements to make

3:49

it fit even better into the narrative

3:51

that they're looking for. But the

3:53

underdog sports

3:54

comedy is

3:56

one of the genres that has kind of really

3:58

faltered as... they've stopped making

4:01

kind of mid-sized movies. And

4:03

so to me, it's, look, this is not

4:05

an earth-shattering movie. It is,

4:07

I would dare to say, inessential

4:10

in some ways, but I enjoyed

4:12

it thoroughly, and it is the kind of movie

4:14

that I always want to be available

4:17

to people, and I want, this

4:20

is a story I've heard before, I

4:22

just want to hear it again and

4:23

again and again. How about

4:26

you, Jean? So just to give you context of what

4:28

I was going through when I sat down to watch this

4:30

movie the other day, my soccer team, Tottenham

4:32

Hotspur, lost an absolutely chaotic game.

4:34

Like, it was almost like

4:36

a Ted Lasso script. There were two red cards,

4:39

a bunch of our players, got injuries that will keep

4:41

them out, probably for weeks, if not months. So I needed,

4:43

like, a palate cleanser when I sat down to watch

4:45

this movie. And that's what I got. It was really

4:47

dope. It was a lot of fun. It's very broad

4:50

and sitcom-y, but, you know, a lot of the jokes

4:53

actually land. The performances were really

4:55

winning. Speaking of Ted Lasso, I wish

4:58

that we had more time with some of those characters.

5:00

Like, you almost wish this was a sort of

5:02

serialized thing, but it was a lot of fun.

5:04

It was, like Linda said, it also was

5:06

like a trifle. I definitely was like,

5:09

okay, it was a nice, fun,

5:11

pleasant,

5:12

yeah, I'm not gonna say it at all. Not at

5:14

all. Yeah, I had a pretty similar

5:16

reaction to this film, and for my context, I did

5:18

not have to root for Tottenham

5:21

Hotspur, but I have had the experience

5:23

of coaching a team of

5:25

wacky, lovable misfit losers. You're

5:28

not talking about the PCHH team, are you? Oh

5:30

my God, our team would be even worse. But

5:33

I was coach of the Onions softball

5:35

team back in the late 90s and early

5:37

aughts, and we once had a two-game

5:40

stretch where we were outscored by a total

5:42

of 72 to nothing in two

5:44

softball games, each with a one-hour

5:46

time limit. Oh, my God.

5:48

Surprised there was enough time for them to run

5:51

around the bases

5:51

that many times. No,

5:54

it was as hapless as the score made

5:57

it sound. And the following week, after

5:59

that two-game stretch, game stretch, we lost a game

6:02

9-1. And scoring that one run

6:04

was like winning 10 Super Bowls.

6:07

Those are the kind of sports stakes that I can get behind.

6:10

And I love not just a loser, but

6:12

like a spectacular loser, a record-setting

6:14

loser, the worst team in the entire

6:17

world, and the attempt to go from

6:19

worst team in the entire world to

6:21

maybe the second or third worst team in the

6:23

entire world. The qualifiers are only four

6:25

weeks away, Mr. Rongan. All

6:27

I want from our team is just one goal. One

6:31

goal. I appreciate the

6:33

very, very modest stakes of this film,

6:35

and I appreciate the modest stakes of this film in

6:38

the context of Taito Waititi's career

6:40

also, because one of the things that kind

6:42

of bugged me about JoJo Rabbit was

6:44

he was taking that kind of slightly

6:47

whimsical kind of storytelling style and

6:49

applying it to a story about the Holocaust. And

6:52

this is taking that whimsical storytelling

6:54

style and applying it to a knockabout

6:56

underdog sports comedy. And that to

6:59

me is the right sense of scale,

7:01

the right sense of stakes. And I had

7:03

a ton of fun. It was mildly diverting.

7:05

Will I remember it after we finished this conversation?

7:08

Not necessarily. But

7:10

I got a kick out of it.

7:11

The other thing I like about it is I

7:14

think when you say, Steven, that it has

7:16

appropriately sized stakes. One

7:19

thing that I always think is important

7:21

in sports fiction

7:22

is to remember that the vast

7:24

majority of sports people, the stakes

7:27

in their life are not, am I going to be the best in

7:29

the world or not? Their goal is to be better

7:31

than they were yesterday, better than they were

7:33

last time. So there's a real charm

7:36

to me. You know, I had the same feeling as

7:38

you, Steven, you know that they're not

7:40

really going for are these guys going to

7:42

become world champions? Or even

7:44

really,

7:44

are they going to qualify for the World Cup? You

7:47

get the feeling that the ultimate

7:49

stakes are can they win a game? And

7:52

I appreciated that. I also did think like,

7:54

you know, the interesting thing about this Michael Fassbender performance

7:57

is that there are times when I feel like he's having a little trouble

7:59

getting his arm out.

7:59

around exactly who this guy is. None

8:02

of this shit makes any sense. You don't even have

8:04

a full squad of players out there. No wonder

8:06

you're the worst team in the world. At

8:07

the very beginning, somebody makes a comment

8:09

to him about you should take this job

8:12

and go to American Samoa to

8:14

heal. And so you know something

8:16

has happened. But for a while,

8:18

to me, it was a little hard to get

8:20

a sense of who this guy was. There's a sense that he

8:22

drinks too much. There's a sense that

8:25

he's separated from his wife. And

8:27

it's a little vague on that. But I think

8:29

as they go on, they do do a good job, particularly

8:32

with the relationship between him and

8:35

Jaya. I was invested

8:37

in that, in that relationship and in

8:40

his understanding that she was very, very

8:42

talented and that she was a leader

8:44

on the team and that the guys

8:47

on the team didn't see her the way that he

8:49

kind of assumed that they would.

8:52

It's just so warm. The

8:54

other performances, the guy

8:56

who's the head of the Soccer Federation,

8:59

I think that's a really funny and

9:01

entertaining performance. Yeah, it was

9:03

just him. But the fact that he responded,

9:07

absolutely incredible. I really

9:09

think things are going to turn around, you know, son? It's

9:11

like in The Matrix. I think this

9:13

man is the neon. That

9:16

is Oscar Kiley, who is very,

9:18

very funny in this movie. Yes,

9:20

and I think he's very funny. And

9:22

I think there's also something

9:25

to be said for the story of

9:27

how this team losing by 31

9:29

goals, how

9:32

it affected them. That's real people

9:34

when that happens. Those

9:37

are real people who have to get up and keep living

9:39

their lives. And

9:42

there's a lot of reflecting on sort of what that did

9:44

to interest in soccer in their

9:46

community and what it did to their reputations.

9:50

And I was kind of invested in all that.

9:52

I liked it.

9:53

The head of the Federation, he keeps saying, actually, one

9:55

goal. I go faster. And I was like,

9:57

I can't do anything with the team. He's just like, one goal. on

10:00

a one goal, right? Like the stakes are

10:02

both really low to Steven's point and

10:04

also like sufficiently like

10:07

sufficiently daunting one goal. They've never

10:09

scored a goal in their entire history. In American

10:11

soccer, there's this guy Matt Turner and

10:14

in college there was this clip of him famously

10:16

letting in the dumbest goal you've ever seen in your life. Like

10:18

the ball flies a million feet into the air, he

10:20

tries to catch it and it just bounces in behind

10:22

him and he just like collapses to the to the grill,

10:26

you know, mortified and he became

10:28

a laughingstock and now, you know, he's like a professional

10:30

soccer player and he was like, it was really demoralizing

10:32

to have my lowest, like one of the most

10:34

embarrassing things that ever happened to me happen in

10:37

front of the entire sports watching

10:39

world. And so, you know, there's a whole

10:41

subplot about the keeper who was in the

10:44

goal for that 31-0 drubbing. It's

10:46

like the stain that like haunts him all the time, right? That's

10:48

how it would be if the lowest

10:51

moment of your sporting life became

10:53

this like moment

10:55

of international locker. Yeah, you would carry that around for

10:57

a long time.

10:57

Yeah, but it's interesting to think, I think

10:59

from

11:00

a character perspective, and I think this is one

11:02

of the things that this movie in its own kind of light

11:04

way gets at is

11:06

like, what does it take to be the kind of person

11:09

who will go out there representing

11:12

your country in

11:14

a situation where everybody expects

11:16

you to lose by 30 goals and you know

11:18

that your odds of

11:20

competing meaningfully are probably very

11:22

minimal, but to find it in yourself

11:24

to still practice and still work

11:27

and still try to get better and still

11:29

be a team. Like I just

11:31

think that's interesting to think about and not

11:33

necessarily

11:34

the most common sports

11:36

narrative. I wanted to touch on

11:39

some of the a little bit of controversy swirling

11:41

around this film and the way that it tells

11:43

the story of Jaya. There's a scene

11:45

early in this movie in which Rongan

11:48

is kind of dead naming her.

11:51

They get into a fight on the pitch

11:54

and she shoves him and

11:56

then apologizes to him. There's

11:58

been some kind of talk around this

12:01

film, like, maybe this film should have

12:03

centered her instead of him. Having

12:05

her apologize to him in that scene

12:07

is a little squeamishness

12:10

inducing. I

12:11

mean, I definitely can see where that's

12:14

coming from, particularly the centering, the question of centering

12:16

him versus her. But I felt

12:18

like the message of the movie

12:21

was pretty clear that they

12:23

have her apologize to him. As you

12:25

might have to apologize any time you shove

12:27

your coach. And I would definitely

12:30

agree that I might have left that out

12:32

and structured that differently. But I think also

12:35

at that point, he's too much

12:37

of a jerk to start that

12:40

kind of reconciliation, maybe. Yeah,

12:42

and I think this

12:42

film makes him a little too much of a jerk

12:45

in general. Mm. Say

12:47

more about that. You know, obviously, like, this

12:49

sort of underdog sports movie, the coach is always reluctant,

12:52

and part of the hero's journey is always that the

12:54

hero resists the journey. And your whole

12:55

bad news duck thing

12:57

is... Yeah, you got

12:59

to have the coach who's like, this is my last stop,

13:01

I quit, I give up. And I don't care. That's

13:04

part of it. For one thing, there doesn't seem to be any

13:06

evidence that Rangan himself held

13:09

those views or treated the real

13:12

Jaya this way in

13:14

a movie that is otherwise so light

13:16

and so enjoyable and so

13:19

kind of knockabout uplifting. To

13:21

me, it took me out of the joy of the movie

13:24

a little bit. They do talk about Fafafini

13:26

in the

13:27

context of American Samoa, that it is

13:29

unremarkable for someone to be trans or

13:31

non-binary, right? I'm just wondering if they

13:33

introduced that conflict sort of to underline that

13:35

here, Jaya being this

13:38

kind of singular athlete would have been

13:41

something that nobody even blinked an eye at, right?

13:43

I agree with that. I think they did want to make

13:45

that point. I think it seems like making

13:48

that point that she was so much part

13:50

of her team without those guys

13:52

acting like they thought it was weird

13:55

or anything like that, when

13:57

the expectations so often in... American

14:00

sports and perhaps sports in other countries

14:02

as well, you know that athletes

14:05

are very Apprehensive

14:07

about gender identity and sexual

14:09

identity and things like that I think

14:11

they did probably want to introduce the idea

14:14

that her team was not

14:16

and so it may have been that they needed a way For

14:19

him to kind of come in as you say with that janky

14:22

lens and for him to be kind of

14:24

corrected in that way I also

14:26

can understand what Stephen's saying and that it might

14:28

have been interesting to see This story

14:30

as like the

14:31

story of her and her her

14:33

entire playing career. It may

14:35

be as simple as they based it on the Documentary

14:38

about Brong and coming to coach the

14:40

team and she when she is introduced She's

14:42

obviously like introduces like major character,

14:45

right? She has a whole like slow-mo

14:49

Like oh for a second she's about to become the sort

14:51

of thrust of the movie and like like you said Stephen

14:53

It would make

14:54

a ton of sense for that to have been the case

14:57

Yeah, she's more integral to this team than this

14:59

carpet bagger Throws a

15:01

bunch of tantrums that completely do

15:03

not help, right? It is kind of part

15:05

of it for the coach in a story like

15:08

this for the coach to be like I don't care.

15:10

I'm a jerk,

15:10

but I do think there's

15:12

something about Him

15:15

that has like a very that's

15:17

what I mean when I say I feel like they never quite

15:20

got that character exactly You

15:22

can wonder why he's kind of sent to

15:24

coach this team and eventually they kind

15:26

of say to him Well, you didn't you weren't really

15:29

sent there to help them you were sent there to help

15:31

you and I was like, well, that's

15:32

Not

15:34

a great thing to

15:35

do to this team of guys We

15:39

sent you this coach not expecting them

15:41

to help you like

15:42

he will never go to therapy So we're gonna

15:44

be his his therapy for the next

15:47

eight months of your life. Exactly.

15:47

Exactly Exactly. So he

15:50

he as a character was my biggest

15:52

kind of

15:54

Bump with the movie was was

15:56

his character was a little roughly

15:58

made for me

15:59

I did like about his arc, and

16:02

that I definitely appreciated as a sports

16:04

fan, was there is a undercurrent

16:07

in this movie of kind of establishing and

16:09

wrapping its arms around the fact that coaches

16:12

throwing tantrums, players

16:14

throwing tantrums, this has been a part of sports

16:16

for much longer than any of us have been

16:18

alive, let alone been following sports. And

16:20

I like the way this movie gets at the

16:23

fact that that stuff just doesn't work. Yeah,

16:26

that stuff doesn't make players play better.

16:28

And it doesn't make you a better coach. It doesn't make you

16:30

a better coach. And so I liked

16:32

the fact that this movie does with him

16:34

at least kind of toy with the idea that

16:36

he becomes a better coach when he

16:38

realizes that he needs to stop acting like

16:41

that. When he throws tantrums, he looks ridiculous.

16:43

I

16:44

did appreciate the fact that they

16:47

really just go for

16:49

it. You know, you mentioned Steven in the intro, the training

16:51

montages. When you get to the training

16:54

montage in this in this movie, the one where

16:56

he's like, All right, we're gonna get you in shape

16:58

and start. They just lean directly

17:01

into it. They play the music, you get

17:03

the guys running, you get them doing the drills

17:05

in the ladder. You

17:06

know, you get the some of them are good at it.

17:18

And some of them

17:20

you get the moments where he sees a player and he's like,

17:22

Who's that? Like, they

17:24

just lean right into it. There's

17:26

no effort to sort of,

17:29

this is not a subverting tropes

17:31

situation. This

17:33

is wrapping your arms around it, giving

17:35

it a big hug saying nice

17:38

trope. I love you. I love you.

17:40

I love you. I think

17:43

we can agree that this is a fun one. Watch

17:46

it with your folks on Thanksgiving.

17:48

This is that kind of movie. We want to know what

17:51

you think about next goal wins. Find

17:53

us at facebook.com slash PCHH.

17:56

That brings us to the end of our show. Gene Demby,

17:58

Linda Holmes, thanks much for being here.

18:00

Thank you bud. Appreciate you. We want to take a

18:03

moment to thank our Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus

18:05

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slash happy hour or visit the link

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in our show notes. This episode was produced

18:22

by Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katziff.

18:25

Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy

18:27

and Hello Come In provides our theme music.

18:30

Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from

18:32

NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson and we

18:34

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