Things i’ve grown to dislike…

THe movie Goal was released a couple of years ago and the sequel Goal 2 is to be released soon with the trailer available online right now [view the trailer].

It’s the story of a young illegal mexican immigrant in the US who is a gifted footballer but his dad doesn’t want him to play professionally when a scout tries to take him to Newcastle United for a trial. Obviously he does well and makes it in the end.

It’s a underdog story in the vein of many other underdog movies, Mighty Ducks, Bad News Bears (the original movies). Though in this case as it’s focused on the one player it’s more apt to compare it to Rocky or, if you’ve seen it “When Saturday Comes” which stars Sean Bean as a footballer who makes it to the big stage and it’s infinitely more in depth than the glamourous marketing brand driven, Goal.

Non content on stopping at 1 movie, he has of course made it to the Premier League which is regarded as the most watched and entertaining league if not the most skillful league in the world, the producers are to make 2 more, the first one of which is titled “Goal 2″… HOW INSPIRING. Could they not have come up with something better than that?

Goal - A new hope
Goal - Santiago Strikes Back
Goal Evolution
Goal Goal Goal
Goal - The Empire Stikes from long distance and scores?

Just a suggestion.

Nonetheless, he now leaves Newcastle to play for Real Madrid. Completely understandable in this story line, though apparently the producers are huge Liverpool fans and when they offered the part of Santiago’s first team to Liverpool FC they turned it down because they didn’t want to be seen as a club whose players leave for another team. Newcastle obviously have no shame in that respect.

The question through all of this is very simple, the movie should have stopped after half an hour. He is a mexican illegal immigrant into the US. He has never played for either Mexico or the US. In the football leagues in Europe a player has to get a work permit (especially in England) to play football if you or your parents were not born in Europe.

To get a work permit is quite hard as you have to prove you have played 75% of your countries international games. Hence alot of players don’t get to play in England.

How then did Santiago manage to walk into the Newcastle first team?

There are other questions of course. He grew up in America not Mexico and no doubt learnt his football in America. I doubt very much that his skills would be good enough to play Premier League and even if they were, he was playing casual kick around at a park in LA. It would take months or years of training to get him up to Premier League pace.