Next Goal Wins

Based on the 2014 documentary of the same name, Next Goal Wins tells the story of Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender), a football coach tasked with turning the infamously bad American Samoan national football team – who lost 31-0 to Australia in a qualifying match for the 2002 World Cup for a world record defeat – into something resembling a decent squad. Rongen has his work cut out for him, but the team’s not the only thing with problems, and he must look inward and face his inner demons to make the world’s worst football team into – well, not that.

Next Goal Wins’ greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness, is its script. It’s certainly funny, with director and co-writer Taika Waititi bringing his distinctive sense of humour. However, it’s also oddly unfocused, lacking a coherent narrative structure to join its jokes together, delivering the bare minimum for the story to land but seeming uninterested in delving deeper.

It’s a shame because the American Samoan team’s story is one with tons of storytelling potential, but Next Goal Wins leaves that potential on the bench for much of its runtime in favour of riding on the back of the Taika Waititi brand of comedy.

The piece’s writing is compensated for in part by its strong ensemble cast, who do a great job of making sure all the comedic bits land and propping up the relatively barebones character arcs. In particular, Kamaina, who plays Jaiyah Saelua, a fa’afafine (a third gender in Samoan society) and the first openly transgender footballer to appear in a World Cup qualifying match, puts in a fantastic, multi-faceted performance that elevates the script to make Jaiyah its strongest character by far.

Unfortunately, the cast doesn’t get much to work with, with many characters left conceptually underbaked and many talented actors underutilised. This is true for much of the American Samoan football team, but even for Fassbender’s Rongen, ostensibly the leading man, whose performance only really works as a foil for Kaimana to bounce off and flounders in most other capacities.

Things come together a little more for the film’s climax, but it seems more like the script realising its general lack of thematic cohesion and playing catch-up rather than paying off things it had set up previously. 

Overall, Next Goal Wins is fine, but that’s its main problem: it’s just fine, with no ambitions beyond that. It feels as if it was written and directed with the knowledge that underdog stories are easy money, and the American Samoan team has the ultimate underdog story, coasting by on the strength of the narrative open goal of a feelgood ending without providing much substance over the beginning and middle.

Umar Ali

Next Goal Wins is released nationwide on 26^th December 2023.

Watch the trailer for Next Goal Wins here: