"Damned United" and the tragedy at Leeds

A genuine soccer movie tells the story of Brian Clough, the greatest soccer coach in England to never coach the national team.

Mark StarrNovember 13, 2009 21:55Updated May 30, 2010 12:13

British actor Michael Sheen arrives at the world premiere of "The Damned United" at Leicester Square in London, March 18, 2009. (Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)

BOSTON — American soccer devotees spend a lot of time despairing the lack of a soccer culture in this country.

But there is no doubt that something different is afoot here. A few years ago, a movie like “The Damned United” might never have kicked up on these shores.

“The Damned United” is a genuine soccer movie, not a fantasy about Keira Knightley and other lithe and lovely, young women kicking a ball about. Indeed, I can’t remember a movie in which women had less prominence.

The damned United in question is not, as most would assume, the current team from Manchester, the English soccer juggernaut that has won the last three Premier League championships. Rather it is Leeds United, a power back before the Thatcher revolution, when teams from England’s hardscrabble north could still compete on the field with the big-city teams from Manchester, Liverpool and London.

But the story is that of the late and legendary Brian Clough, recalled in England as the greatest soccer coach who never coached the English national team. Clough was a man with the motivational powers of Vince Lombardi and the media savvy of Muhammad Ali. He came to prominence as a coach with Derby County, a small team in the northern hinterlands that he guided from the Second Division into the First and then — to the amazement of the soccer establishment — to a championship.

Success, however remarkable, is seldom as interesting as failure. So the film focuses on Clough’s disastrous 44-day tenure at Leeds in 1974. Clough had been the surprise choice to succeed the renowned Don Revie, who, following back-to-back titles at Leeds, had left to coach England in the wake of its bitter failure to qualify for the ’74 World Cup.

Calling “Damned United” a genuine soccer movie is, of course, meant as high praise. But it has loftier ambitions than your typical sports film. Based on the 2006 novel “The Damned Utd,” it boasts a script by Peter Morgan who has become the standard — (“Frost/Nixon, “The Queen,” “The Last King of Scotland”) — for literate cinema. And a star turn by Michael Sheen, who — first as Tony Blair and later as David Frost — was remarkably deft in playing second fiddle to Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth and Frank Langella’s Richard Nixon.

While Clough’s failure at Leeds may not quite approach Shakespearean in its tragic scope, the film offers a marvelous glimpse at a remarkable personality, heretofore unknown in this country, as well as a smart meditation on the pitfalls of hubris and related character flaws.