I happened to be surfing channels on the TV the other day and I came across a flabbily titled movie called United Passions. I would have probably moved on in thirty seconds if the name ‘Sepp Blatter’ had not echoed out of the speakers. So I put the remote down and settled down to watch what I imagined was based on the inside workings of this sports body.
– PREVIEW: 2015 FIFA Club World Cup guide
– SHARE, RATE, WIN: Sport360 ValoraFutbol
– Follow: Live football scores around the world
– MESSI: Barca now better than Guardiola’s side
Hopefully, it would be a good education on its intricacies. The movie was released in 2014 on FIFA and ostensibly designed to contain or deflect from the damage spilling out by way of accusations of rampant corruption at every level of the world soccer body.
The film premiered long before the FBI ended its three-year probe with 16 indictments brought and the two FIFA vice-presidents Alfredo Hawit and Juan Angel Napout arrested on suspicion of bribery earlier this month. Using US banks for the money transfers makes it a federal offence.
The herculean cinematic effort to make Blatter look like a crusader for honesty and probity is laughable. This paean of praise is the fruity filling sandwiched between schmaltzy and syrupy shots of little children playing soccer in third world nations, using shoes and bricks as goal posts and documentary shots taken from the World Cup archives and spliced into the film, all of these denoting beatific global aspiration through soccer.
Saw the list of @goldenglobes nominations today… utterly crushed not to see #UnitedPassions among the nominees
— Caught Offside (@COsoccerpod) December 11, 2015
You would think that with the walls of their edifice collapsing dustily around them the FIFA mandarins would be very careful with the script for this biopic before coughing up $26 million (Dh95.4m) for it. Clearly, the two-hour testament to utter rubbish ranks by general consensus as the worst film ever made.
Besides the Blatter blather and some sinister scenes of getting poefaced representatives of African nations into the mix to build up the vote banks, the film ambles along aimlessly, at one point shifting from the quixotic gambol in favour of Blatter to an admission of guilt by devious design to fill the empty coffers of the federation.
We are also shown how the executive board wanted Blatter to resign for impropriety but the stoic knight in shining armour fought the good fight and overcame his detractors.
In one incredible scene he produces the name of South Africa as host nation 2010 like a magician pulling out a rabbit from a hat…replete with a wink and a conspiratorial nod.
The film ends up with a tear jerking, cliché drenched voice over about this one soccer ball that has united the world and from being a humble sphere it has become a symbol of hope, melted borders (stop me, someone) and it ends on the high equal gender note of a poor little orphan Annie, hope shining in her eyes, scything a ball past a whole team of boys to score a goal.
United Passions made $918 on the opening weekend, the lowest in Hollywood’s history, beating the incumbent for that dubious honour, “I kissed a Vampire’ from 2012. In Phoenix only one person bought a ticket. It has been described variously as a ‘cringeworthy, self aggrandising affair’, ‘unintentional comedy gold’ and ‘astonishingly crass.’
The London Evening Standard won first prize for reviews with this beauty: “The most extraordinary vanity exercise; a vile, sugar-coated pile of manure where Blatter and Co manage to make North Korea’s Kim Jong-un look self-effacing”.
The reason why the film serves as an indictment is because it was sponsored by FIFA and was marketed as a ‘feel good about us, look what we have done for togetherness and world peace’ response to the growing attacks on its integrity. The arrogance of the tenor of the film is breathtaking and relevant. It is the same arrogance that made these officials believe they were above the law and could do anything they wanted.
It so totally comes off as a ‘migoodness, they have to be hiding something crooked’ reaction. FIFA lost every penny. The film was added to the list of indiscretions.
No one in the sports body had the courage to say that as an orchestrated PR exercise it was an unmitigated disaster. At best, a crude, clumsy effort to cover the cracks that now crumble into debris.
The time has come the walrus said to throw the baby out with the bathwater, dissolve FIFA entirely and start again with a new script. PS: United Passions was shot in France. It should have been buried there.
