The Team (2014) Poster

(2014)

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2/10
At least as bad as I expected, perhaps even worse Warning: Spoilers
"Die Mannschaft" or "The Team" is a German 90-minute documentary movie from 2014, so two more years and this one will have its 5th anniversary. If you read the names of the people who made this (Christ, Gronheid, Voigt), then you will perhaps ask who are these people as (in terms of writing and directing) they have not made a name of themselves at all for anything before or after this film we have here. Anyway, these 1.5 hours are the official German movie for the 2014 Football (i.e. Soccer) World Cup and the way it turned out eventually with Germany winning was probably also a main reason why pretty many people saw this documentary that was released later in 2014. 2006 had its "Sommermärchen", 2014 has its "Mannschaft".

Now let me talk about my personal liking here. First of all, I want to say that it is all about the perspective you have here and if people find happiness from Germany winning the World Cup, especially if they don't have that much beauty and joy in their lives, then perhaps it is a good thing this was made. But with this approach, I am also already stating my opinion that this film is for the simple-minded. The fact that with over 1,000 votes there is not yet a single review shows that football/the World Cup/this movie is not exactly something that attracts intellectual. It is for those who think it is enough to be born inside a country to cheer for it at events and suddenly turn into a huge football fan after not caring about football for two (maybe four) years since the last big global event. And there are millions of people here in Germany that fit this description. Truly embarrassing.

Anyway, about this film in particular, let me make a reference to the beginning with that fake fall free kick trick and I was really embarrassed to see Thomas Müller participate in shenanigans like these as he is one of the few football plays from the German team that I don't think are complete buffoons. Or I should say "didn't" as now I know better. In addition, another interesting scene would be when we hear defender Mertesacker talk about how it was the first time he spoke the truth. What do we learn from that? The World Cup was won by a bunch of fakers and liars. Really sweet. These are your heroes.

And finally the documentary also offers almost nothing from the informative point of view. Except self-adulation from start to finish of course. Oh it was all so perfect, the conditions were all so great. The relationships between the players were all so heartfelt. Blah blah blah. Imagine if Algeria had scored that early goal and won 1-0 in the round of the last 16. Then of course they would have said the exact opposite. It's a scenario where one second can change everything. And all we hear is 95% fake and make-believe. same goes for the cabin talk. I was shocked to hear Löw's speech there which is basically nothing but stuff everybody with an IQ of 80 can say if he has a bit of a talent to motivate and stuff you heard in your nearest pub a hundred times. That's enough to become world champion? Maybe it's time to put the entire sport of football to rest finally. Oh those poor souls who think that anything about the German national team is credible or authentic. Stay away from this film here. Sucks for me to see Zerlett working on this project as I always respected him for his collaborations with Harald Schmidt. Highly not recommended.
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