The national hysteria surrounding Greece’s improbable 2004 Euros win is a sight to behold in a thoughtful portrait of the manager who made it happen
Not many football documentaries kick off with a quote from Homer, but this profile of Otto Rehhagel, the German coach who steered Greece to their improbable European Championship win in 2004 is more thoughtful and, indeed, erudite than most. First pictured reflecting on classical Greek civilisation while standing inside Athens’s Panathenaic stadium, Rehhagel is presented as football’s ultimate transnational sophisticate, able to ally his innately Teutonic sense of discipline with the Greek’s more emotional relationship to the game.
Well, most football documentaries are there to replay the greatest hits, and this one doesn’t disappoint: the Greeks fight their way past France, the Czech Republic and Portugal in the final rounds (all by 1-0) after managing to get out of the group stage...
Not many football documentaries kick off with a quote from Homer, but this profile of Otto Rehhagel, the German coach who steered Greece to their improbable European Championship win in 2004 is more thoughtful and, indeed, erudite than most. First pictured reflecting on classical Greek civilisation while standing inside Athens’s Panathenaic stadium, Rehhagel is presented as football’s ultimate transnational sophisticate, able to ally his innately Teutonic sense of discipline with the Greek’s more emotional relationship to the game.
Well, most football documentaries are there to replay the greatest hits, and this one doesn’t disappoint: the Greeks fight their way past France, the Czech Republic and Portugal in the final rounds (all by 1-0) after managing to get out of the group stage...
- 7/1/2021
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
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