Goal! and the global sports film

The 2005 film Goal! exemplifies what the Hollywood sports film does best: it offers an emotionally engaging, utopian story of a talented athlete whose hard work and determination make possible the overcoming of social disadvantage to achieve stardom. Goal! also follows the pattern for most sports films by offsetting the overly simplistic formula for such success by to some degree realistically portraying the business of professional football - as well as its protagonist Santiago Munez's experience of immigration - that make up the world in which the story takes place. Goal! exemplifies the increased influence of globalization on commercial sports and movies. Its globalized appeal may have helped with football fans who understand the game as an international sport, but it may have also limited its access to viewers in the USA where globalization represents a threat to the cultural exceptionalism that the most popular American sports have long helped to define.