Matthew Nolan writes new score for Football As Never Before, which follows Manchester United player during 1970 game against Coventry City

An avant garde film in which the camera lingers on George Best for the duration of a single match at Old Trafford in 1970 has been resurrected by an Irish composer, who has created a new score for its re-release.

The long-forgotten film, Football As Never Before, released in 1971, is by German director Hellmuth Costard, who used eight 16mm cameras to track the Manchester United footballer’s every move during a Saturday league game against Coventry City.

For 45 minutes each way and at half-time, the cameras stay focused only on Best, who sports shoulder-length hair and a beard. There is a hypnotic sequence of him inside the bowels of Old Trafford.

It far predates the celebrated 2006 film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, in which cameras follow French player Zinedine Zidane in a game for Real Madrid.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The footballer outside his George Best Boutique in

Manchester. Photograph: PA

Costard, who died in 2000, was a contemporary of German new wave film-makers such as Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders.



Matthew Nolan, a Dublin-based musician, has not only rescued the Best movie from obscurity but written a score for a premiere of the revived film timed for 25 November – the 10th anniversary of the player’s death.

For Nolan, who first saw Football As Never Before a decade ago at a German film festival, bringing Costard’s work to a popular audience has become something of an obsession. “As a musician with an interest in film scoring, it struck me then that the film could accommodate an alternative and more creative musical response – or even soundtrack,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest FA Cup 5th round against Northampton in 1970. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

“As an idea it’s been percolating for many years now but it was only with the 10th anniversary of his passing coming up this year that I thought it felt right to try and make it a reality. This is an opportunity to use music to try and draw an audience more deeply into the film.”



Nolan compared the Best movie to the more famous Zidane film which was shot with 17 cameras to the soundtrack of Scottish indie band Mogwai.

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The Irish composer said: “Even though Football As Never Before was a pioneering piece of cinematic art by an experimental German film-maker, back in 1971 it had limited distribution options. I think if it had been made today it would have received similar exposure to the Zidane movie. It is a source of some annoyance that in all the press attention the Zidane film got that nobody to my mind acknowledged that there was a precursor in Best.”

Nolan, who is a music curator and lecturer in film at Trinity College and Dublin Business School, said he hoped bringing Costard’s movie to a wider audience would help recapture Best as a gifted sportsman rather than a playboy.

He said: “My specific aim here is to offer a celebration of a sporting icon which looks to return Best to that arena where he was peerless. There is something quite pure about Costard’s film and given how the media distorted Best’s image in later years it feels only proper that an attempt is made to get back to the sublimely gifted footballer.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Best during match against Coventry City. Photograph: Colorsport/REX Shutterstock

The new film score, which Nolan said was “requiem-like”, includes an arrangement from cellist Ernst Reijseger who has produced music for five of Werner Herzog’s movies.

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The movie, described by Nolan as a lost gem, contains two key pieces of action on 12 September 1970: when Best assists Bobby Charlton for one goal and then the Belfast-born player scores himself. United defeated Coventry 2-0 that day.

Norman McNarry, Best’s brother-in-law, said he and his wife Barbara were “pleasantly stunned” to learn about Costard’s filmic homage to the footballer. “As far as I can recall I have never heard about this film before, nor has Barbara,” McNarry told the Guardian.

“I think it’s really outstanding that this guy has resurrected this film after all these years. I know Barbara will be delighted that this movie will bring people back to what it really was all about with George: the purity of his talent on the pitch. We would both love to see it, to see him again in all his glory in this film,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest On holiday in Mallorca, Spain, in 1971. Photograph: Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Nolan, whose compositions have been performed in Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art and New York’s Lincoln Center, said he was a Liverpool fan rather than a Manchester United supporter but had been obsessed with Best since he was a child.

Nolan said: “First and foremost I’m a football fan, although it is hard being a Liverpool fan these days. But it’s actually quite easy to put sporting tribalism to one side when the skills and the man on show are so captivating.”

The new score to Football As Never Before will be launched at the 300-seater George Bernard Shaw theatre at the Visual Arts Centre in Carlow on 25 November.