Next Goal Wins
Using the familiar tropes of the feelgood sports film, Next Goal Wins gently challenges Western social priorities, and affirms gender nonconformity, from a Pasifika perspective.
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This post is part of the ‘One Take’ weekly series analysing the politics of a film currently showing at the cinemas.
Content warnings: Alcohol; transphobia.
Note: Given that, at time of writing, Next Goal Wins is still showing in UK cinemas, this analysis only lays out as much of the film’s scenario as is necessary so as to avoid spoilers. It is therefore suitable to be read either before or after watching the film, while hopefully still enriching the viewer’s appreciation of it either way.
In 2001, American Samoa’s men’s association football team infamously lost 31-0 to Australia in an Oceanian qualifying match for the following year’s World Cup. Loosely based on real events (and a previous documentary made about them), Next Goal Wins is set a decade later. With the team’s fortunes showing no signs of improvement, head of Football Federation American Samoa Tavita Taumua (Oscar Kightley) decides the time has come to bring in an overseas coach. The man they are sent is hard-drinking, bad-tempered American Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender).
Rongen is still reeling from his separation from wife Gail (Elizabeth Moss), now in a relationship with his immediate superior, Alex Magnussen (Will Arnett). He struggles to acclimatise to life in American Samoa, and his fierce competitiveness puts him at odds with his seemingly far more laid-back players. These include Jaiyah Saelua (Kaimana), who is faʻafafine – a third gender present in Samoan society – and feminine-presenting, and with whom Rongen initially clashes. Yet as their first match, against Tonga, approaches, coach and team come to understand each other better, and embark together upon a journey of transformation.
The sports film framework
Next Goal Wins winkingly tells us it is based on a true story, save for a few embellishments. It frequently leans into heavily staged, broad, feel-good comedy, but its incorporation of real-life references lends some authenticity to the points it seeks to make, and suggests that the hopes it intends to raise might already be being fulfilled. More specifically, it is able to draw upon the dramatic possibilities available in sport that other sports films based on ‘true stories’ draw upon. Indeed, it feels like a not-too-distant cousin of the 1993 film Cool Runnings, based on Jamaica’s unlikely qualification for the men’s bobsleigh competition in the 1988 Winter Olympics.
Essentially, Next Goal Wins is the story of an underdog upsetting the odds, and in doing so demonstrating that there is more to sport, and to life, than winning; effort, pride, togetherness, and being true to yourself are what matters. It at least temporarily overturns the hierarchy and displaces the competitiveness central to international sport, itself underpinned by geopolitical realities. American Samoa might not be able to produce a team capable of qualifying for a World Cup, but that does not devalue its right to play, nor detract from what it gains as a team and as a nation for taking part
A culture clash
The comedy at the heart of Next Goal Wins centres on contraposing America and American Samoa as cultural opposites. Rongen (Fassbender’s Irish accent notwithstanding) epitomises a perennially enraged White America, aspiring to levels of excellence that neither he nor his charges are capable of, and when foiled, pursuing his own self-destruction with those around him as collateral damage. He has to drop the façade of chaotic genius to properly take stock of what he has lost, and connect with the players.
American Samoans are also engaged, knowingly, in a degree of performance for the benefit of Rongen, as stand-in for a broader White audience. This means both shambolically imitating professional seriousness, and comically mirroring the folksy spirituality and wisdom Westerners simplistically project onto peoples of the ‘Global South’. Yet the film lovingly validates, even while gently lampooning, what it presents as the authentic idiosyncrasies of American Samoan culture, from its devoted, all-encompassing Christianity, to its commitment to enjoyment of and happiness in life.
If Tavita’s decision that the team needs a foreign coach smacks of accepting White saviourism, the role of White saviour is one he must coax Rongen into performing, and that others, including his son Daru (Beulah Koale), are deeply sceptical of. It is Rongen who really needs saving, and who is transformed through the encounter. This perhaps risks a crude inversion of the salvational relationship: a trope of Westerners needing to travel outside the West to find themselves again, amid the purity of two-dimensional locals. Yet it is partly balanced by Next Goal Wins’ commitment to redeeming the American Samoan team after its humiliation a decade earlier.
Faʻafafine and gender identities
Perhaps the most integral subplot in Next Goal Wins pertains to Jaiyah Saelua, who in real life broke ground in playing for the American Samoan men’s team while openly not identifying as binarily male, and then again after transitioning to womanhood. The film makes clear that the challenge she faces is not gaining acceptance among her peers and in American Samoan society, where her faʻafafine identity is embraced. Rather, she must overcome the machismo of men’s sport, which Rongen embodies in his earlier confrontations with her, and the side-effects of medical transitioning.
This is pertinent subject matter for a film playing widely to Western audiences, at a time when media and political elites in countries like the US and the UK are trying to incite popular transphobia and erode trans legal rights, by exploiting issues such as the question of transgender athletes participating in sports bifurcated into men’s and women’s competitions.1 It also means implying equivalence between being faʻafafine and being transgender, when they are culturally specific identities, and the relationship between the two is more complex, as Saelua – who identifies as both – and Kaimana – who plays her in the film, and is also faʻafafine – have explained.
The American Samoan men’s team’s relationship with Saelua also signifies a very different model of manhood. It is apt that it is their assistant coach, Ace (David Fane), who is the film’s gentlest character, who explains warmly about faʻafafine to Rongen. Saleua is ultimately the character who Rongen is most changed through encountering; in affirming her gender identity, he detoxifies his own masculinity as well.
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At time of writing, 47.7% of the film’s box office revenue has come from the North American market, and a further 11.8% from the United Kingdom.