The World at Their Feet

A very good movie about one of the best World Cup tournament with one of the best national team that ever existed. This is about football, not soccer. The governing body of the sport is FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) not FISA (Fédération Internationale de Soccer Association).

Since I consider myself a big fan of football and history enthusiast, I enjoyed the movie. It gives a good perspective on how much the game has evolved since those days. From the simple rules, referee criteria that was used to the simple and joyful style of play.

The movie itself is well structured and follows the correct chronological line of the tournament, something we don't always see in official movies from great football competitions.

Mexico 70 was one of the best of all the World Cups - it's official FIFA film is not so hot.

Goal (the 1966 film) was a bizarre mishmash of styles, football and weirdness - The World at Their Feet is just boring. In all the other World Cup films we get copious amounts of weird behind the scenes footage, but here all we see are the games and goals. Now that is not such a bad thing if you want to see a historical record of this superb tournament, but if you have seen Goal, G'ole or Hero (not to mention the perverse original version of the 1978 film with its clearly acted scenes involving Montoneros and Military leaders meeting in back streets to discuss football) you are missing out here.

The main reason to seek out this film is to see all the famous goals from the other side of the stadium to what you will be use to. In 1970 TV production was nothing like today, and 95% of the planet will have only seen Brazil's four goals against Italy from one angle. Here the film cameras are positioned on the opposite side of the stadia and give a small taste of what multi-angle digital TV would have made of the tournament.

One for completists and historians, but still fun. Show your kids the goals and tell them that football existed before David Beckham and Ronaldo.