There are movies that bomb at the box office. And then there is theFifabiopic United Passions, starring Tim Roth, Sam Neill and Gérard Depardieu, which was hit with the cinematic equivalent of a thermonuclear strike when it opened in the US 10 years ago this week.
You might remember the fallout; the fact it took only$918 (£678) in its opening weekend, making it the lowest grossing film in US history at the time, and the stories detailing how two people bought tickets to see it in Philadelphia, and only one in Phoenix, before it was pulled by distributors.
Then there were the reviews. “As cinema it is excrement,” Jordan Hoffman wrote in the Guardian. “As proof of corporate insanity it is a valuable case study. United Passions is a disgrace.” Admittedly, there was never going to be a good time to launch 109 minutes of soft-sheen history and propaganda about Jules Rimet, João Havelange and Sepp Blatter. But when14 Fifa members were indicted on corruption chargesjust days before the $26m (£19m) film’s US release, the film became a byword for hubris and excess. Only in Russia, where it made £140,000 at the box office, did it muster any sort of audience. Although what they made of Neill’s attempt at Havelenge’s accent, which veered wildly between Brazil, New Zealand and Ireland, is anyone’s guess.
The 10-year anniversary seemed like the perfect time for me to grit my teeth and watch United Passions for the first time. I also hoped that those involved might have got over their collective embarrassment and would be prepared to talk about it. Was it really the worst sports movie in history? Worse than Rocky V? Or the Love Guru, which starred Mike Myers as a bearded Indian whose task, in thewords of the Observer’s then critic Philip French, “is to counsel a black ice-hockey star whose wife has run off with a French Canadian goalkeeper known as “Le Coq” for the prodigious size of his membrum virile”.
Having watched it, I can say that United Passions really is right up there. The script feels like it was written by a 2015 version of ChatGPT that has been programmed to hate the English, who come across as universally pompous. The dodgy stuff in Fifa’s history is danced around, or ignored. And some of it is so cringey it makes you gasp. At one point, for instance, Blatter expresses his fears over the 1978 World Cup in Argentina because the military government is murdering its opponents. “Who cares,” Havelange replies. “During the World Cup they only dream of one thing, that ball. Because football brings consolation to all tragedies and sorrows!” That is the same Havelange who took millions in bribes and kickbacks from Fifa’s deals withthe marketing company ISL.
In fact, United Passions is so comically awful the Internet Movie Database gives it 2.1 out of 10, a ranking so dismal it would qualify for its worst 100 films of all time list if it had the 10,000 votes needed to qualify.
When the film came out Roth, who plays Blatter, admitted: “This is a role that will have my father turning in his grave,” before confessing he did it only to put his kids through college. You can fault his performance, but not his honesty. A decade on, however, few others want to revisit it. The publicist sent me a lovely email but didn’t remember many specifics. An ex-Fifa employee jokingly referred to the film as a “blockbuster” but had only vague memories of its genesis. Fifa, meanwhile, didn’t want to comment.
The only exception? Blatter himself. When I spoke to his official spokesperson, Thomas Renggli, he asked me to fire over a few questions. A day later, he came back with the replies. “Obviously the movie was not a success,” Blatter, who turns 90 next year, told me. “A movie about Fifa is always controversial, so for me it was not a surprise that the opinions were so different in Russia and in the US.”
Blatter also insisted that the concept of United Passions had not come from him and, contrary to internet rumour, he had not tinkered with the script to make himself the hero. “The idea came up after there was a small movie called Goal,” he said. “And in this environment, the Fifa management brought up the idea of producing a big movie. It was definitely not only me behind it. And concerning my part in the production, I was only an adviser. I was not involved in the script.”
Which is just as well, because it is bad. Really, really bad. A few minutes into the film, for instance, Rimet tries to get Football Association bigwigs to join Fifa while speaking to them at half-time during a game. “Our boys are two goals down gentlemen!” Rimet is told. “There are things much more important than life and death. There is football. And at half-time things are deadly serious!”
Blatter also insisted he was OK with how the film turned out, but Renggli told me that there was befuddlement when it was shown to Fifa employees before its premiere at the Cannes film festival. “We were all sitting there in this big auditorium and everybody was thinking, ‘what do they want to tell us with this film?’ To me it did not make sense at all.”
There are some, of course, who think Fifa will be making another expensive mistake in the US this weekend when it launches its 32-team Club World Cup. The early signs are not positive, with tickets for the opening game between Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami and Al Ahly going for $55 – 16% of the original asking price of $349.
There are also concerns with player welfare, given the increase in the number of games and Blatter, who was recentlycleared of fraud by a Swiss court, is not a fan of the tournament, or next year’s expanded 48-team World Cup. “Havelange once told me that I made a monster when I created this wedding between TV and football,” he told me. “But now it’s all too much. There are too many games. And too many teams in the tournaments. Sooner or later, we will have 128 teams, like in a tennis grand slam.”
And whatever you think of Blatter, or indeed United Passions, it is hard to disagree too much with those sentiments.