Michael Alden thinks back to their long-since-past football fan days through The Damned United and, though they still enjoy the Peter Morgan/Tom Hooper sports drama, no longer find its patterns comforting.

There was a period of my life where I considered myself a football fan. Football here meaning the game that United Statesians call “soccer,” but… I kept track of the English Premier League and MLS both. Spent way too many hours playing Football Manager. Occasionally strapped on knee braces and kicked a ball around with friends.

That particular period of my life was, I don’t know if I would say pleasant, exactly, but definitely a period of growth. A time when I was figuring out a lot about who I was, who I wanted to be, what company I wanted to keep. That work is exhausting, and within the context of that exhaustion, football was a bit of a respite. It was something that I did just because I enjoyed it, with no goal attached to it, no importance other than the enjoyment I got from it, and the bonding with friends that it offered.

Which is, I suppose, a way of saying that I remember this movie fondly. Watched it the first time shortly after I moved to Seattle—actually went to the theatre for it, by myself, sat in the back row. The theatre was empty. I ate Junior Mints and drank a Diet Coke, both of which I smuggled into the theatre in the inside pockets of the army jacket I wore constantly at that point. The movie was, I don’t know if I would say fun in and of itself, but a good experience. A nice way to spend an afternoon.

Is this a good movie?

Brian Clough is introduced to us here via chunky (and to modern ears kind of pathetic) early-1970s music and a shot of a car driving down a road under a gray sky. Clough is introduced to us not so much via a face, or a walk (he’s driving the car), as his lower teeth, protruding above his lip as he sings along to “What’s New Pussycat?” We don’t see Clough’s eyes for a solid 20 seconds as the scene builds us up towards a moment of hope—Clough approaching the Leeds United FC stadium—before Clough drives past the waiting children and directly into a cut to a “Yorkshire Television Colour Production.”

There’s something to be said for the way that this film refuses to begin by valorizing its protagonist. How it makes everything seem kind of seedy and mediocre and, well, 1970s. Clough licks his upper teeth as the interview begins, and the detail is exquisitely petty.

This movie is well shot. It’s well put together. The details all fit. It’s well cast. While I was working on this review, I mentioned to a friend that Colm Meaney was in it; my friend said, “Yeah, that makes sense.” It does make sense. Timothy Spall, as Clough’s best friend and co-manager Peter Taylor, is very Timothy Spall. Michael Sheen, as Brian Clough, is lovely and driven and emotionally tortured in the way that the protagonists of these kinds of movies always are.

And that’s the point, I think. That’s the way that the movie sits with me now. Everything in this movie is well made, and well thought-out. It runs like clockwork. Like it’s on rails. It’s on rails. This kind of movie always is, I think. This is Walk the Line, but with football rather than music. Or, if you prefer: This is Catch Me If You Can, but it’s all very serious about itself. Or, if you prefer: This is A Beautiful Mind, but without the visual flourish. Or, if you prefer: This is The King’s Speech, but more British.

We know what’s going to happen, more or less, before it does, because it’s what has to happen. The protagonist is going to display some great skill. That display is going to consume him (it’s always him). He’s going to tilt over into obsession and egomania. He’s going to isolate himself. He’ll be brought low by that obsession. In the end, kind people who love him are going to do a lot of emotional labor to make him Realize What Really Matters.

It’s fine. It’s totally fine. Sure.

I guess… When it comes down to it, this is a good movie in every way that doesn’t matter to me now. I don’t dislike it at all. I legitimately didn’t mind rewatching it. Given an afternoon with nothing to do, sure, I’d totally watch it again.

I’ve just seen this movie so many other times since. It’s not that I didn’t recognize the pattern before, it’s, I think, that I don’t find the pattern comforting now. It’s just…there.

I’ve drifted away from soccer in the last decade. Stopped calling it football. Done a lot of that work of figuring myself out. Still doing it, of course. Still need a break sometimes; it’s just that soccer isn’t that break for me anymore. That difference in the emotional weight I put on the sport has, of course, made a difference in the emotional lifting this film is capable of for me.

I can’t blame the movie for that. Not gonna get upset at myself about it either. It’s a good movie. It’s well made. It’s there if you want it. Go watch. Nobody’s gonna get mad at you about it.

— Michael Alden