The way it wasn’t
Posted on December 17, 2012 12:16 am
People who saw the 2005 movie Game of Their Lives, since retitled The Miracle Match, are familiar with the fact that shortly before it left for the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, the U.S. national team played a game in New York against a touring English FA team.
I have long ago gotten used to historical inaccuracies in the many movies I watch about non-soccer historical events, so a lot of those in Game of Their Lives didn’t bother me very much. Concerning this New York game, however, those inaccuracies are piled pretty deep.
Before this movie was made, some people feared that Hollywood was going to distort the record so much that it would have the United States team beating England in the World Cup by 8-1 and going on to fame and riches. They were glad when the correct score was preserved and the game in Belo Horizonte was presented accurately. Hollywood knew better than to alter a well-known game too much. But if you believe everything you see in the movie, then what you will believe about the lesser-known game in New York is that it was played at night, in a downpour, on what looks like a high school field, and that a United States team that played in warm-up suits because it hadn’t been given uniforms and was led by the grimly solemn Walter Bahr suffered a 4-0 humiliation at the hands of an English team led by the sneeringly arrogant Stan Mortensen. Let’s see how many inaccuracies there were in that last sentence. I count at least seven of them.
The New York game actually was played on a sunny afternoon at the 22,000-capacity Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island. The United States team wore the uniforms of a local American Soccer League team, Hakoah, because its own uniforms had already been shipped to Brazil. Walter Bahr was and is a smiling, jovial man. The late Stan Mortensen was a polite, friendly man, 180 degrees opposite from the creep he is portrayed as, but maybe the one in the movie is a different Stan Mortensen anyway, since the famous one wasn’t even on that English FA team. The game was a moral victory for the American team, which suffered only a 1-0 defeat at the hands of a team that had just scored 66 goals in nine games in Canada.
The inaccuracies concerning that game are only some of many in that movie. Others that this soccer history buff particularly noticed are the fact that the St. Louis players and the eastern players are portrayed as being unfamiliar with each other until a tryout game a few weeks before the World Cup (many of them had been teammates in the 1948 Olympic Games and the 1949 World Cup qualifying series, or opponents in the U.S. Open Cup), and the fact that a man who died in 1976 is shown being interviewed at an MLS game.
Despite those problems, I didn’t think it was a bad movie. I enjoyed it. But I wouldn’t rely on it too heavily if someone were to want to know exact details of what happened in 1950.
I was actually disappointed in the movie. Wasn’t the director the same one who did Hoosiers? The Miracle Match is a dozen levels below Hoosiers.
Yep, same director. Shows what script and budget can do.
Next you’re going to tell me that Escape to Victory movie with Pele and Stallone wasn’t accurate either!
That one is entirely accurate.
There was a real incident involving prisoners and German soldiers that resulted in a book, which I once heard might be made into a movie, but it hasn’t happened to my knowledge. The incident took place in Ukraine in 1942 and the prisoners were players from the Dynamo Kiyev soccer team. I no longer have the book, but I think the title of it is Dynamo. I have a vague impresssion that the makers of Escape to Victory were aware of this incident when they made that movie.
It was made into a 20 minute film on ESPN:
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=7998818
I’ve always thought that the conclusion of the movie would have been more interesting if it spent a little more time on the circumstances related to Joe Gaetjens’ disappearance, presumed death at the hands of the Tonton Macoutes, and his posthumous induction into the Soccer Hall of Fame many years later.
I try my best to not notice such things but I wasn’t at all surprised that a Hollywood movie turned Joe Gaetjens into a black Haitian practitioner of voodoo when in reality he was a light skinned (being half German) Catholic… not quite the TV trope of the “magical negro” but close.
I just started a soccer/football blog, http://www.upper-ninety.com. I post new videos every day about players, games, analysis, history, skills, goals, highlights, and more. Check it out if you respect a good 40-yard, upper ninety banger.
I hope you didn’t post this here because you think this is someplace where lots of readers will see it. If you did, I think you’re in for a disappointment.
My nephew wanted me to watch Miracle ,about the 1980 Olympic hockey team.
I did,but there was so much they had wrong about the game against Russia (completelely left out a couple stupid penalties the Russian took) and essentially ignored what was the most nerve racking game against Finland that I found it less than satisfying.
I am hoping the National Film Board of Canada will make a movie of the 2012 London Olmpics game between USA and Canada …using James Cameron as the Director…. give it a real Hollywood twist and have Canada win, with referee Pedersen banned for life… ah Hollywood and myth making.
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