I Believe in Miracles

To football fans in the United Kingdom, the name Brian Clough needs no introduction or building up. Thanks to the release of The Damned United in 2009 his name got noticed outside of Britain, I Believe in Miracles is the perfect follow up to that movie, a sort of explanation as to why there has been a film and documentary about the man and his charges.

Director Jonny Owen assembles members of the great Nottingham Forest (always Notingham, never Notts) side of the late 1970s, interviews the key players and gets brilliant anecdotes out of them. Concurrently he offers up archive footage and a bitch funky period musical score. Clough is the leader, whose mantra is not one of assembling super stars, but of actually putting a team of men together and asking them to work hard, believe in themselves and be all that they can be. This is not Hollywood, every inch of this doc is true, no artistic licence here.

The team is a mixture of smokers and jokers, drinkers and jinkers, cloggers and sloggers all responding to Clough's (and his equally important side-kick Peter Taylor) less than normal football training and management methods. Everything here goes against the grain of today's football managers, I mean what manager today would run his men through nettles and then go for a pint with them afterwards?! Players smoking at half time, surely not? Wonderful. This is a true underdog story, a film for footie fans to rejoice in - regardless of who any of us in our tribal leanings support in British football. 9/10

I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES tells the story of a footballing miracle, for the most part achieved without spending vast amounts of money. In 1974 Brian Clough was sacked as manager of Leeds United after only 45 days ( a subject explored in Peter Morgan's THAT DAMNED UNITED). At a low point in an otherwise distinguished career, he took over at Nottingham Forest, then a mid-table Second Division club with few aspirations. Within a short time he not only secured promotion to the old First Division, but took the club to two consecutive triumphs in the European Champions Cup.

Jonny Owen's documentary tells this story with contributions from many of the players involved including John Robertson, John O'Hare, Archie Gemmill, Larry Lloyd, Garry Birtles and Kenneth (aka Kenny) Burns. To be honest, their comments are roughly similar in tone, attesting to Clough's remarkable skill as a person manager, allied to a naive belief that soccer is at heart a simple game played with passion and commitment. With Peter Taylor at his side (renewing a partnership that worked highly successfully at Derby County), Clough created a genuine team wherein everyone played for one another, for the most part with players who hitherto had led undistinguished careers. He did make some big-name signings such as the first £1m. transfer involving Trevor Francis, but otherwise he made effective use of low-cost players.

Clough was also a highly effective media performer. In these days of anodyne comments mediated through club media officers, it's refreshing to see just how blunt Clough actually was. He had a unique ability to answer the interviewer's' often banal questions, as well as point out the media's prejudices against Nottingham Forest for being an "unfashionable" club. On the other hand he was an incurable optimist, projecting a positive view of the future that could inspire players and viewers alike.

The story told in I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES is an effective one; the presentation less so. Director Owen's penchant for using late Seventies/ early Eighties music as a soundtrack is a good idea, but sometimes becomes intrusive, deflecting our attention away from the (highly entertaining) footage of Forest's games. The film seems too concerned to fit the narrative into wearyingly familiar tropes; hence when Forest play Cologne (Köln) in the first European Cup campaign, Owen sees the entire event as a replay of World War II - Britain against Germany - and uses the theme from THE GREAT ESCAPE. By the late Seventies memories of the War were becoming fainter and fainter as Britain tried to make its way in the EEC.

The film's ending seems somewhat rushed: we learn little about Forest's second European Cup campaign; nor do we find out about Clough's later career at Forest, when he fell out with Peter Taylor and suffered the humiliation of the club's being relegated. Nonetheless the story is an entertaining one, an evocation of a time when soccer was not the money-bloated sport it seems to be today.

Brian Clough's career will always hold a lot of interest for fans of British football history, and this documentary gives us another insight into the great manager. Virtually all the players make contributions, making for a more in depth study than usual of Forest's glory years.

Like others have said, it would have been interesting to have found out more about Clough's later years but understandably the makers wanted to finish on a high rather than get bogged down with his less successful later period and sad farewell.

All in all a great documentary, just a pity that it had to be saturated with an unnecessarily incessant black soul/disco soundtrack - there were other types of music in the late seventies that would have reflected Britain much better at that time - even a bit of variety would have been nice.

Essential viewing for football fans.

Harks back to an era of football fairytales and muddy pitches. Worlds away from today's game, when football was for the fans.

Nostalgic maybe, but also wonderful and, in some places, highly emotional.

A British sports documentary; A story about an English football club's extraordinary 1979 UEFA European Cup triumph and the colourful exploits of the Nottingham Forest team manager, Brian Clough. This film was a long time coming for British football enthusiasts who recognise the scale of the achievement. The main theme is how high achievement and success sometimes emerge from what seems like modest or only burgeoning talent and a skilled man-manager, in this case a bombastic personality, one who was once ridiculed for his abrasive and forthright opinions, though underestimated by national media. Through news clips and interviews with the team manager and his assistant, Peter Taylor, the narrative has force and panache. The film also analyses how psychology methods were used in sport to aid man-management and encourage self-belief in professional footballers. A wealth of amusing anecdotes humorously subverts the rhetoric and football club corporate culture of today, with its strict management of player reputation. The message of the film seems to be that the answer to team success has always been there all along: team spirit. Where most football club documentaries appeal to their own supporters, this one will have wider appeal.