Analysis: Mike Bassett: England Manager (2001)
I first saw this football mockumentary early in my teens when any sort of film featuring the sport would light my candle — heck I even enjoyed Goal, but that’s a review for another time.
Despite being far too young to appreciate many of the gags, its farcical, Longest Yard-esque plot taking place during the 2002 World Cup tapped into the manic excitement I felt in the build up to any major tournament.
For many British lads, football is a huge part of growing up and MB:EM is filled with humour — some subtle, some slapstick — that will resonate with anyone who knows the sport’s quirks, the characters it produces and the ravenous media that’s covered it since the advent of the Premier League.
In that way it is a film created for a bunch of blokes on a sofa drinking a few tins of Fosters, but for any fan of the mockumentary style, it’s one worth watching for some surprisingly nuanced commentary on British footballing culture.
I don’t wish to simply share my sentimentality Steve Barron’s work, however, and upon my latest viewing I started to view the film from a technical perspective.
To give an overview of the style of film MB:EM is, an obvious — and overly simple — description would be: ‘it’s The Office for football fans’.
While MB:EM certainly shares common features with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s definitive mockumentary, to best demonstrate the slice of life it is examining, more brash, perhaps unbelievable comedy was required. Football is brash, excessive and unbelievable at times after all.
MB:EM opens up with one of these unfeasible set-ups: following Norwich’s 3–2 win over Leicester in the Mr. Clutch Cup, the eponymous Bassett (Ricky Tomlinson) leads his side on an open-top bus parade around Alan Partridge’s home town — who’d have thought Norwich would be the base for so much British comedy by the way.
Their lap of honour goes very wrong when the driver enters the one-way system and exposes the Canaries to the elements on an East Anglian dual carriageway.
That success, along with the scarcity of keen English managers, makes Bassett the FA’s only option.
Not that the governing body’s senile, phallus-doodling, all-male executive care, however. The organisation are apathetic to Bassett throughout and a number of observations — the decades-old notes under Geoffrey Lightfoot’s carpet and them falling asleep during an England match — illustrate a greedy self-interest that is still under scrutiny today as recent reforms do little to change an historical perception of a dated body.
After exposing himself to a horde of photographers waiting outside his home, Bassett gets the call that he’s got the job and the film firmly establishes its main theme.
MB:EM is heavily inspired by a real documentary that examined England’s horrendous qualifying campaign for the 1994 World Cup. An Impossible Job delivered a first-hand view of Graham Taylor’s increasing exasperation with the press and director Steve Barron frames Bassett’s turbulent narrative through the eyes of the media, right down to tabloid headlines portraying him as a sprout.
Each important beat of his arc is accompanied by news reporting or a grilling at a press conference from reporters, demonstrating that managers’ personal lives are inevitably tied to media coverage whether you do something right or manufacture a monumental cock-up.
Bassett’s actions — no matter how honest his intentions — inevitably end up causing a scandal and his early conversations with Martin Bashir (playing himself) establish Bassett as a well-meaning but ultimately clueless normal bloke trying his best in an impossible job. He may make himself a buffoon by stating that his dad was “like a father figure”, but there is genuine care for England’s national sport when he says “football touches many people’s lives and it makes a difference”.
When Bassett first assembles his squad we’re introduced to players and staff that, while being sporting stereotypes, are all given screen time to mock various aspects of the game.
Dave Dodds (Bradley Walsh) joins Bassett as an assistant manager who’s “always positive, never says no; not unless you want him to”. This “yes man” is used to lampoon the predictability of post-match interviews where subjects regurgitate the same stock phrases in an attempt to avoid any controversy and follow the party line.
Why reporters think they get any intelligent insight out of these interviews never fails to baffle me. It’s almost like they’re hoping footballers make a fool of themselves to make good TV. Ohhh.
Kevin ‘Tonka’ Tonkinson (Dean Lennox Kelly) is quite obviously meant to mock Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne’s unstable genius, Harpsey (Terry Kiely) is as flash as David Beckham, Lonnie Urquart (Philip Jackson) is a shameless wheeler-dealer salesman-come-manager in the mould of Harry Redknapp and Gary Wackett (Geoff Bell) is the no nonsense hard-man always up for a scrap.
For casual football or comedy fans these obvious stereotypes provide some easy laughs, but at some point in the film, these character traits are used to mock footballing culture or place them at odds with Bassett. They’re not just surface level ideas left undeveloped through the film, they are set up early and have a worthwhile payoff.
Tonka’s brush with a ladyboy lands him a place on the bench that sets up his later redemption in the Argentina match, Harpsey’s phone repeatedly irks Bassett and Wacko (played by the same actor who would later play Tommy Hatcher in Green Street so he must have done a cracking job here) leads scenes of hooliganism that are deliberately shot to emulate the violence during England’s Euro 2000 campaign in Belgium.
This sort of writing creates the documentary feel as every development is organic and never contrived to force the story along.
There are moments of real silliness that do hamper authenticity for the sake of comedy — Urquart driving off with the balls forcing an imaginary training session was a moment of Sunday league unbelievability — meaning certain examples of meticulous filmmaking can be easily missed.
One lasting memory I have of Goal is just how abysmal Kuno Becker (the guy who played Santiago Munez) is at football. Anyone who’s watched a bit of football can tell that he’s barely played the sport before and during sequences where they’re trying to show just how good he is, Becker’s lack of coordination takes you out of the film.
MB:EM has this shortcoming sorted as each member of the largely British cast looks comfortable with a ball at their feet (many featured in Dream Team which may explain their proficiency) adding a level of immersion that is lacking in plenty of sports movies. This type of film should undoubtedly be judged by the same criteria as any other flick, but it sure helps when casting decisions are at least partly made with sporting ability in mind.
For the most thorough appreciators of football behaviour, during changing room scenes, shots of the bench and any such small parts of the game, each actor holds themselves or has some behavioural quirk that footballers of any level would have seen — without consciously processing it perhaps — thousands of times before.
Many of my fondest footballing memories came during all the other social activities you do as a team and the ability to capture the ‘banter’ (written in need of a better word) that defines off the pitch interaction, is an area where MB:EM excels.
These efforts to capture real football behaviour and not what some film executives think football looks like, allow training sessions and matches to be enjoyed as a broad, genuine spectacle.
Crowd scenes (filmed with just a few hundred extras in Wembley) and composited crowd replacement is completed ably on a relatively small £3.5 million budget. I never saw the film during its big screen release — I was only eight at the time — but watching on a small screen the transitions from real crowd footage to composites aren’t too noticeable.
Bassett’s first game in charge — a 2–1 home loss to Poland — is the first good example of these large crowd scenes, but one small feature that I’d never noticed before surprised me most with its unexpected commitment to creating a believable documentary.
Shortly after Poland score their equaliser — shown with stock footage of Didi Hamann’s winning goal in the last ever fixture at the old Wembley — a wide shot of Bassett on the touchline shows a cameraman just down to his left.
The next shot has a close up of Bassett from that angle as he commentates on Poland’s winning goal. It’s only one minor detail and I probably wouldn’t have even registered it as a missed opportunity if they hadn’t made the effort to place the cameraman there.
It doesn’t dwell on its ability to actually feel like a documentary, however, as the convention of using philosophical quotes on transitional title cards is cleverly played with.
Real documentaries often use this tool to support video footage with words from well-respected individuals in the field. MB:EM uses the very worst platitudes or out right babble that managers regularly spout to create visual representations of faux-philosophy.
Not bad for a film many wrote off as nonsense lacking technical substance with nothing meaningful to say.
After just one defeat, the media lambast Bassett’s old-fashioned approach and, in what may be a slight at how irrationally reactive football is or just a way of pushing along the narrative, the England squad assemble at an experimental sports science facility to address their underlying problems.
This sequence inflates sports’ reliance on technology and obsession with exhaustive analysis to excessive limits as Rufus Smalls (Robbie Gee) enters a giant ball to end his goal drought while Danny (Dean Holness) and Deano (John Alford) are harnessed into a “skill replicator” to experience the movements of Maradona, Pele and, of course, Mark Lawrenson.
This results in a number of injuries and the next day the sexually-suspect team physio Jack Marshall has his hands full. That’s just how Marshall likes it, however, as he asks Alan Massey (Chris McQuarry) to take his pants off so to treat a wrist injury. I watched this as the revelations of historical child abuse in football emerged in the mainstream and this small piece of dialogue shows how long we’ve probably been aware of such individuals, yet just accepted them as some relic of how football was in different times.
In the build up to an away fixture in Belgium, Bassett’s tendency to write his squads on the back of a fag packet backfires when York City’s Tony Hedges and Plymouth Argyle’s Ron Benson are accidentally included in a 28-man squad.
It’s one of the film’s more memorable gags — despite it being completely impossible — and the lower-league pair make the most of their time on England’s bench.
This selection debacle is one instance where the realism of the documentary style has to be cast aside to accommodate the joke.
Following that moment of levity and a 3–0 loss to the Belgians, more scathing tabloid headlines reinforce Bassett’s professional struggle and a sombre sequence shows the real strain that the job is putting on his family.
We often view the managers of our clubs as disposable workers easily discarded when things start going wrong, but rarely do we see that public dismissal through the lens of anything other than the media.
His son, Jason (Danny Tennant), has had wanker scrawled on his forehead, the England players are half-anonymously speaking out about their manager and Tonka has got himself locked up for drink driving.
Everything is going against Bassett and the intense scrutiny from the media has forced him to turn against the 4–4–2 formation used as a symbol of his commitment to the old ways.
His “Christmas pudding” formation has Tonka as the sixpence and is used in the must-win home fixture against Slovenia.
Despite only grinding out a scoreless draw, Luxembourg pull off an impossible win against Turkey to send the English to Brazil.
Before getting on the plane they record the customary team song with Atomic Kitten and Keith Allen, a tune that is infinitely more memorable than any offering we’ve had for major tournaments of the past decade or so.
The song plays over a montage of different fans in Brazil and even on the most recent watch, I couldn’t help but get pumped up for seeing an England team in a tournament — even it was entirely fictional.
That nationalistic fervour is doubled down on when the squad are marching through the airport in their tracksuits where they inevitably end up in a verbal and physical confrontation with the Scots and the Irish.
This all happens while Bassett is away sorting out the transport — another instance of suspension of disbelief for comic purposes. The joke here is a physical incarnation of the typical “an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman…” setup with the punchline that they’ll inevitably end up getting into a scrap over religion or petty jibes.
That brawl demonstrates how many foreigners see Brits abroad — loutish, boozed up thugs — and Martin Bashir’s following interview with Pele similarly demonstrates what the international world thinks of us when it comes to football.
The Brazilian icon lists off every side he reckons has a chance of winning the World Cup and, despite considerable prompting from Bashir, England never get a mention.
16 years on and we’re still the game’s perennial let downs.
Once the group matches begin — and inevitably go wrong — Bassett’s disastrous tenure spins out of control.
A sweaty 0–0 draw with Egypt triggers the travelling fans who confront Bassett as he boards the team bus and, in contrast to the unintelligible slurs supporters usually come out with, they provide the manager with some sensible tactical advice.
I love Bassett’s response even if it does demonstrate that he’s more incompetent than a random bloke in the stands. It reminds me of the old “I could do a better job” cliche except this time it’s actually true.
Wacko gets locked up for leading the earlier mentioned hooliganism — an example of his previously established stereotype playing a role later in the film — the fans camp outside the team hotel bombarding the squad and, perhaps most crucially for Bassett’s arc, his wife Karine (Amanda Redman) has moved out of the family home following Jason’s eyebrow shaving incident.
At half-time in the Mexico game England are 2–0 down and Bassett launches a foul-mouthed tirade to try and get his players going. It’s something we’ve all wanted to do when watching England play yet such use of language is where the film was often criticised.
Swearing is frequent and creative don’t get me wrong, but to criticise a sports film on those grounds shows to me a lack of understanding of how sportspeople speak.
I can understand that film critics will see the excessive use of foul language as lazy script writing, but you just have to watch Big Ron Manager or any real documentary looking at a sports club to understand that this is how footballers chat, shout, give orders and argue.
England lose 4–0 in spite of the rant and this time the media blatantly tell him he should leave, reminding us again of the influence the media has on an individual’s employment and their mental well-being.
That group stage embarrassment signals the beginning of an identity crisis where, in the space of a few minutes, Bassett completely forgets who he is, only to regain his dignity in the film’s most rousing moment.
In a team meeting Harpsey’s phone goes off — harking back to his earlier character establishment — which Bassett quickly destroys, leading to Urquart laying a swift right jab to the nose.
With everyone against him, Bassett gets on the booze with the same bloke he has just dropped for a late night affair with an unexpectedly manly hooker — Tonka.
With Pele and Geoffrey Lightfoot watching on, Bassett gets on the sambucas. As he literally falls from the bar he is dancing on, a camera snap captures his metaphorical fall from grace as the world media now passes comment on this latest English humiliation.
The football is nearly forgotten as Bassett trudges from his hotel room to face his largest media gathering yet.
MB:EM doesn’t have a specifically identified antagonist but instead creates conflict by establishing believably clashing personalities. The greatest clash is between Bassett and the media and this final press conference represents our hopeless loser facing the mercilessly critical horde at his most vulnerable moment.
Tommo Thompson (Phil Jupitus) has been the most aggressive journalist so far and his questioning is used to remind the viewer of everyone that has turned on Bassett so far.
As the press corps unanimously direct him to get his coat, Bassett solemnly recites a Rudyard Kipling poem that symbolises the down-to-earth outlook on life that Bassett’s father had attempted to instil in his son.
For a moment the journalists are stopped in their tracks as Bassett finally gets a chance for an articulate comeback to their constant efforts to degrade his reputation. They scrabble for notes but soon Kipling’s words have put them into silence.
To show a swing in momentum back towards Bassett’s old fashioned ways, the people who Tommo had listed as being against Bassett are shown listening intently to his every word.
Whenever I’ve watched this film with others, everyone in the room is silent. It has quite an impact and I sometimes wonder how this can be the same film where an international team forget the balls. Aside from those silly moments, MB:EM does a good job of reincorporating elements shown earlier in the film.
This speech, and most notably the famous “four-four-fucking-two” quote, are the culmination of that reincorporation. Bassett’s choice of formation is repeatedly used to show how out of touch he is with contemporary football thinking and so his statement of intent to stick to that most traditional of formations, carries that much more weight.
I mentioned briefly above that football was secondary for this extended sequence. After Bassett comprehensively shoves his way of thinking up the media’s arse, the feeling of excitement to see England do well surges back into the movie.
To really get us to feel that sense of nationalistic pride, the next game is against one of our most famous sporting and political rivals, Argentina.
Twice— and the movie shows us a montage of this — they’ve beaten us in a World Cup through some degree of controversy, making them the ideal opponent to set up Bassett’s potential individual redemption.
In front of another well-composited crowd in the Maracana, Tonka is summoned from the Bench with just five minutes left.
After going past a number of Argentinians — including Bastardo — Tonka’s deft chip comes back off the bar for him to, rather unnecessarily, punch the ball in for the winner. For some reason I always felt like that was some sort of justice for the original Hand of God goal, even though I know that’s a completely irrational statement to make.
Gazza’s controversial celebration after his legendary goal against Scotland in Euro 96 is honoured by Tonka whipping off his shirt, shorts and jockstrap, something you wouldn’t have put past the real Gazza.
The same method of a wide shot showing another camera to establish its position for the next shot is used to film Bassett retreating down the tunnel to call his wife.
The next lot of headline grabs show England’s progress to the semi-finals of the tournament and, I don’t know if this is deliberate, none of these positive stories feature Bassett’s name or face at all. This could be an allusion to the media’s tendency to blame one individual when things go tits up, yet when things go as desired, it’s the result of exceptional collective spirit.
I like that they showed restraint by not making England win the whole thing. After all it is a mockumentary and us winning the World Cup would probably be too unbelievable even in a work of fiction.
As Bassett gets his duty free bottles from the overhead locker — a normal bloke right to the end — a huge turnout at the airport signals that public opinion has come full circle since his appointment.
His grand announcement to carry on for four more years, however, is slightly soured by the knowledge that the vastly inferior spinoff series Mike Bassett: Manager is about his career after losing the England job. Bassett is the self-described “last great footballing dinosaur” and before embarking on his time with Wirral County, he probably should have taken Doddsy’s advice and gone extinct.
I know this film isn’t a technical marvel and doesn’t have the sort of performances for it to be considered a classic, but its parody of a sport that bleeds contradictions and flawed logic stands up to critique today.
We are desperate to preserve the traditions of the game yet at the same time demand more and more technology while ravenously consuming sideshow media events like Deadline Day.
We say players are an embarrassment to the old days when they dive, yet say it’s fine when players fall over under the smallest amount of contact.
We say we want a traditional manager like Bassett, yet vilify him when that approach doesn’t work. There seems a real confusion and disconnect among fans, pundits, players, coaches and commentators regarding how they feel the sport should be and what it actually is.
MB:EM plays on that complexity and incomprehensibility at the heart of the sport these days. It exposes us to our inconsistent ways of thinking and demonstrates how our fickle behaviour actually harms an individual who, just like any manager, is trying to blag their way through a system waiting to shit you out the other side.
Christ, who thought anyone could ever read so much into a dumb football film.
