Next Goal Wins

Mike Brett and Steve Jamison's Next Goal Wins premiered at Tribeca in April 2014 and won the British Independent Film Award for Best Documentary that December. Its story was later adapted as a fiction film by Taika Waititi in 2023; the documentary is the original, and the better film.

The premise is set by a single scoreline. In 2001 American Samoa lost 31–0 to Australia, a world record, and by the early 2010s the tiny Pacific territory had become a byword for sporting futility. The film joins the part-time squad as the US soccer federation sends Thomas Rongen, a blunt Dutch-born coach with a long MLS career, to prepare them for the next round of World Cup qualifying. Around him are the goalkeeper who conceded those 31 goals and still carries them, and Jaiyah Saelua, a fa'afafine defender, part of Samoa's recognised third gender, whose place in the team the film treats with unforced ease.

What makes the film is its tone. Brett and Jamison find the comedy in the situation without ever laughing at the players, and allow the stakes to feel enormous precisely because they are so small by the standards of the sport. Critics were near-unanimous; it holds a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. It belongs on any list of films about what winning means to people who have never done it.