5 responses to “History of Soccer: The Beautiful Game”

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  Saul Franco January 11th, 2010 at 00:52

  It is very good and gives you a good history of the sport. Soccer is the best sport in the world. Believe it or not. Ronaldo is the best soccer player alive and que Viva Las CHIVAS.
  Rating: 5 / 5

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  Mathew Brentson January 11th, 2010 at 01:13

  This series is great but I didn’t buy the dvd as I can just watch it on tape which I taped from foxtel.I have a question for all soccer(football) fans. Did soccer use to be alot more entertaining than it is now because of more defensive tatics in games these days?Please write back on Amazon so I can get your opinion, Thanks and se ya later
  Rating: 5 / 5

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  GregRov January 11th, 2010 at 03:42

  As a soccer player myself and having seen countless amounts of footage and soccer videos, History of Soccer was a major let down. It plays like a monotone history lesson and fails to communicate the passion of the game. It contains far too much footage of landscapes, statutes and buildings than of beautiful plays. The interviews are nice, but they far too long and tedius: they should have played most of the interview as a background talk, while showing the actual footage of the beautiful plays being talked about. It missed a lot of great available footage of crack players (Maradona, Pele, Garrincha, Zico, the Kaiser, Johann Kruif, Higuita, Valderama, Ronaldo, etc.) instead, it shows the players walking about, kissing their girlfriends or travelling around… If you are an academic, or a fan, you may like it. If you are a player, you’ll find the DVDs interesting but rather boring. If you don’t know the game, you will learn about it (after enduring HOURS of monotone talk), but you will not fall in love with the game. Pele himself did something similar back in the 80s or early 90s: a series which aired in TV that gave a full background of the game, all of its aspects, presented all of its stars and taught one how to play it. Such program was of better quality, with great insight into the game and leaved the audience with a desire to pick up a ball and start kicking it! Not only did he talk about the game but most importantly, he SHOWED what he was talking about. Such series had all of the footage shown in this DVD series and much more. I sure wish I could get a hold of it on DVD and I was wishing this DVD series would be sort of an update to that program, but was quite disappointed.
  Rating: 1 / 5

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  Django January 11th, 2010 at 05:17

  Less a history of soccer than the title would suggest, this documentary on DVD is more a chronologically-minded discussion of football topics and polemics rather than pure history, and one that manages to say very little over the course of seven discs. Jarringly repetitive, it will, for instance mention a topic or event on several episodes, each time going a different level of depth into the topic, leading to a feeling of deja-vu for the viewer. I kept wishing this were done by Ken Burns. Then we’d get a feel for the personalities of the sport, something which this cold, distant HOS series fails to do, as well as good highlights, another thing HOS gives in surprisingly little amounts.
  Along with an annoyingly Anglo-centric view of the game (Britain seems to be brought up one way or another in every episode, even for the most tangential of references), there is also a strange preoccupation with Indian football. India gets two whole segments in this series, over twenty minutes of airtime for a nation that isn’t anywhere close to challenging anyone for anything in world football.
  The extras amount to nothing but unnarrated, oftentimes confusing footage collected under a specific heading, but otherwise viewable elsewhere in the series.
  Also, if a team didn’t reach a major final, they aren’t talked about. There is no mention of the Bulgarians at USA 94.
  No mention of Steaua Bucharest’s unlikely penalty shootout win over Barcelona in 86. Many other quality events like this are missing. Instead the series focuses on topics that are often boring, such as devoting an entire hour to the bureaucratic history of FIFA. Yawn.
  Overall, somewhat of a disappointment. Not worth the price.
  Rating: 2 / 5

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  D. davis January 11th, 2010 at 08:16

  6 Needless DVD’s (all information could probably be combined onto 2 DVD’s). More footage of scenery than anything else (mountains, rivers, oceans). Very little goal or highlight footage. More political than soccer-related. More interviews than anything else. This is a low budget film wrapped in expensive, attractive packaging. They milk scenery footage and interviews (i.e. filler) for all they’re worth because they obviously don’t want to spend money on goal and soccer highlights. Also, this movie only covers through 1998 so it’s already outdated. You’d get much more entertainment from “All the goals of World Cup 1998″ or something like that.
  Rating: 1 / 5