If you’re looking for an uplifting, feel-good watch this weekend, Netflix has you covered with The Beautiful Game, a new sports drama starring Bill Nighy, which began streaming on Netflix today.
Directed by Thea Sharrock, with a screenplay by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, The Beautiful Game stars Michael Ward (a British actor best known for his role in the crime drama show Top Boy) as a skilled soccer player named Vinny who’s fallen on hard times.
Sorry, this is a British movie, so I should say he’s a skilled football player, not soccer. (Forgive me, I’m American. Football means something else here!) Vinny meets the manager (Nighy) of a football league who wants him on the team… but Vinny blanches when he realizes it’s a team for homeless players. But Mal convinces Vinny to come along as the team heads to Rome to compete in the Homeless World Cup.
And yes, the Homeless World Cup is a real thing. Read on to learn more about The Beautiful Game true story and the history of the real Homeless World Cup.
Yes, The Beautiful Game is based on the true story of the Homeless World Cup, an international annual competition for homeless soccer players. That said, even though the Homeless World Cup is a real competition, the characters in The Beautiful Game are all made up, as is the specifics of the competition we see play out in the movie. There has never been a Homeless World Cup hosted in Rome, as happens in the movie. (The 2009 Homeless World Cup was held in Milan, however.)
However, the protagonist Vinny (played by Michael Ward) and his coach/manager, Mal (played by Bill Nighy), are not based on real people. They are characters invented for the movie. The only character based on a real person is the character Gabriella, played by Valeria Golino, who was inspired by Mel Young, the co-founder and president of The Homeless World Cup.
And though the Homeless World Cup is a real event, the one you see take place in the movie is fictional. Vinny attends the “20th Homeless World Cup” in the film, but in reality there have only been 18 total World Cups. The 19th Homeless World Cup will take place in Seoul this year, in September 2024.
The Homeless World Cup is an annual international soccer tournament, played by players experiencing homelessness, put on by the non-profit organization, the Homeless World Cup Foundation. The first Homeless World Cup was held in 2003 in Graz, Austria, and has been hosted by various countries every year since. (The exception being 2020, 2021, and 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)
According to the official website of the foundation, all players must be at least 16 years old, and meet at least one of the following criteria to be eligible to play:
The Beautiful Game movie worked closely with the foundation. In an interview for the film press notes, the film’s director Thea Sharrock said, “I wanted to be completely respectful to The Homeless World Cup, its legacy, and its incredible impact on so many people’s lives, so my team and I were very faithful in all of our choices—from the details of a character’s backstory to the color of the pitch and the footballs we used. For the football itself, I wanted to capture the feeling of what it is to play with real passion.”
Sharrock spoke extensively with Homeless World Cup player and ambassador Lisa Wrightsman, who helped to organize the 2023 Homeless World Cup in Sacramento. In addition, many of the background actors—aka actors without speaking roles in the movie—were played by real-life former participants. “Previous participants flew in from Africa, Asia, America, and all over Europe,” Sharrock said. “Meeting them for real was so moving and immediately bonding for all the cast and crew.”
In that same interview, Wrightsman—who experienced homelessness as a result of addiction and played in the 2010 cup in Brazil, for the American team—attested to The Beautiful Game‘s accuracy, when it came to portraying the feeling of the event.
“The film captures a lot of what we have experienced in The HWC. I have coached similar personalities to all the English players and Japanese players,” Wrightsman said. “We always have the most interesting cast of characters and personalities that somehow mesh with each other. Thea Sharrock did an amazing job capturing the challenges, the interactions among the players, the dialogue and relationships. She even captures the overwhelming part of the trip, which is very real—we have to prepare and really mentally coach players to handle the ups and downs and overstimulation of the experience. The way the players connect throughout the week is really special; players from other countries create a bond that lasts for years. The drama for the teams is very real, there are so many ups and downs with each game.”