Opinion

Netflix’s The English Game continues tradition of football films falling short

US sports lend themselves better to film and television but that’s no excuse for so many match-winning overhead kicks

New Netflix show The English Game reinforces the point – can football on film ever be fixed?

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An image from The English Game, a six-part Netflix series charting the early days of football. Photo: Netflix via AP

Formerly of the South China Morning Post, Jonathan White has written about sport from China for nearly 15 years, and covered the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the Fifa World Cup in Brazil in 2014 and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Published: 9:00am, 29 Mar 2020Updated: 9:00am, 29 Mar 2020

Isolation is giving people a lot of time on their hands and in between constantly refreshing the news for the next heartbreaking update, they need entertained, if not distracted.

Football fans are no different. The creators of football management simulation Football Manager made the game free, while Fifa has opened up the archives. Clubs are getting behind Fifa 20 tournaments, websites are doing minute-by-minute reports of old games and some are even getting referees to go through all the action of Shaolin Soccer to look for bad calls.

Which brings us to another of modern life’s most reliable distractions: Netflix.

The streaming site has tried to jump in where real-life football has left off with The English Game, a period piece on the origins of football from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes. Fans of his series might be pleased with the class division between the men in charge of the game and the common man fighting to play for it, but fans of football will be bitterly disappointed with the action.

That’s nothing new. In one sense The English Game has lived up to everything that has gone before it. Football on film and television is always and without exception awful.