Posts Tagged ‘soccer’

Don’t piss this referee off. Hell, you better be on your best behavior.

According to Reuters, a soccer referee in Malaysia pulled a gun and fired it into the air after issuing a red flag to one of the players – a suspension that cause several unruly players to get even more unruly. After the man was “attacked” for the call, he ran to his car and grabbed his service revolver. After all, he’s also a cop.

Officials have arrested the referee on tentative charges of unlawful discharge of a weapon, and are also holding several of the players on possible rioting charges.

Not an incredible story, but certainly a funny one. After all, I always thought the red card was the most serious punishment you could receive in a soccer game. Malaysia decided to add a new tier.

There are some movies that you hear about and hear about and hear about until you reach the saturation point and begin to believe that they will never see the light of day. Such is the case of Goal II: Living the Dream, a soccer film that was a hit overseas but has been struggling to make it to U.S. theaters since… well, I’m guessing around 1873.

Goal! (the original) was surprisingly good and well done, but it flopped magnificently in the United States. Right there, you knew that the sequels, which were already developed or in development, would have a hard time finding a distributor and release date. I thought for sure that we’d see this picture go straight to DVD, but instead the movie is getting a very small, 250-theater limited release through distributor Peace Arch Entertainment. Genius Products will handle the DVD releases.

Assuming that the sequel is even half as decent as the original, I would have gone another route: I would have renamed the film to something that isn’t nearly as cheesy (no matter how you look at the title, it is God awful) and marketed it to all those youth soccer leagues that are popular in the U.S. (how soccer continues to fail to turn those kids into adult soccer fans is a marketing travesty). Goal II: Living the Dream, with the right title and right promotion, could still have a chance.

As of now, Peace Arch plans to release Goal II sometime in the spring of 2008.