Offside stories: Deepanjana Pal writes on football documentaries amid the World Cup

FIFA counts on these innate dramatics when it organises events like the World Cup. But complaints and controversies don’t hold a candle to the emotions, antics and physical prowess on display when the world’s best footballing talent takes to the pitch.

You can know nothing of the rules and care little about which team wins, and still feel the magnetism of a good football match. Why else has this World Cup got Indians cheering for Cape Verde and Japan?

It was the Brazilian legend Pele who made the phrase “o jogo bonito” or “the beautiful game” synonymous with the sport. There are those who say it is no longer as beautiful as it once was (because modern strategy makes far less room for individual flair), but there remains a fairytale quality to football. “When you pass the ball… it creates a connection between people. It’s the school of life,” French player Nicole Mangas once said, attempting to explain what the game meant to her.

Our culture teems with stories of how it has transformed the lives of players such as Pele, who became arguably the world’s first Black sporting superstar.

Ben Nichols and David Tryhorn’s documentary Pele, now streaming on Netflix, features footage from across the legend’s career and conversations from his final years (he died in 2022). As a child, he worked as a shoeshine boy to help support his family. He then shot to stardom at 17, after helping the Brazilian team to victory at the 1958 World Cup. For 20 years, he seemed to effortlessly be everywhere on the field. By the time he retired, at 36, he was being hailed as the greatest footballer of all time.

The documentary is at its best when it examines the role the game and Pelé’s fame played in a politically volatile Brazil, unifying the country and serving as a source of national pride. The clips from past games are thrilling too. The footage is grainy, the camera angles shaky, but Pelé seems able to bewitch the ball into doing his bidding, and that still feels incredible to watch.

I’ve also been re-watching the 2023 documentary Copa 71, directed by Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine, on YouTube lately. It pieces together a bit of history that FIFA tried to erase: a football tournament that culminated in a final that still holds the record for largest attendance at a women’s sporting event.

In 1971, a group of businessmen decided to organise a women’s World Cup in Mexico, hoping to capitalise on the success of the 1970 men’s Cup. Teams from Argentina, Denmark, England, France, Italy and Mexico competed. As FIFA actively discouraged the tournament, with bans and restrictions on venues, games had to eventually be played in privately owned arenas. Still, the Campeonato Mundial de Fútbol Femenil was a huge success.

The documentary unfolds like a time capsule, packed with the footage from a different world. It is funny, thrilling and heartbreaking. The women who participated were clearly brilliant players, yet the event was sold to the public as a way to see women in hot pants. “Women who play soccer are not muscular monstrosities, but generally pretty girls,” one organiser said. It hurts to think these were the choices: a Cup pitched in this way, or no Cup at all.

FIFA would only launch its Women’s World Cup in 1991.

(Write to Deepanjana Pal @dpanjana on Instagram. The views expressed are personal)