The 1974 finals in West Germany saw the emergence of "Total Football" in the shape of the classy Dutch led by the legendary Johan Cruyff. The Dutch swept all before them until they came up against the solid hosts in the final. Beckenbauer led West Germany to a tense 2-1 victory.
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Official World Cup movies usually have a formula of beginning with something about the host nation, a wide selection of games from the tournament before climaxing with the final. For some reason Heading for Glory starts with the final between West Germany & The Netherlands, then shows a scant number of group games before returning to the final again! As someone who remembers the 1974 tournament, so many iconic moments are missing from this movie, such as Yugoslavia's 9-0 destruction of Zaire, Rivellino of Brazil's free kick against East Germany & of course Mwepu Ilunga of Zaire using an innovative & illegal defence of a free kick against Brazil. The movie contains no historical context, such as Chile are mentioned without stating they were only there because the Soviet Union refused to play them in a stadium where leftist opponents of the Chilean government had been executed. Haiti are shown with mentions of Papa Doc, even though Duvalier had died in 1971 & there is no mention of the unfortunate Ernst Jean-Joseph, who failed a drug test after their defeat to Italy. For someone who was not around for the tournament, this is probably one of the worst official films. However, if you are German & just want to enjoy Beckenbauer, Muller, Breitner, Vogts, Maier & company beat the Dutch, it's probably one of the best!
The BBC are currently showing all of these official FIFA documentaries of the World Cup from the 60's onwards. I missed the first one they showed of the 1962 World Cup but I've watched the 1966 and 1970 ones. They were both quite good with lots of football action. Unfortunately I'm not sure what happened with this one but it's pretty terrible. To start with it opens with a spoiler immediately telling you who won and the result of the final which makes you think why should I bother watching anymore then. After that there's a dreary depressing inquest of the losing team and then some filler of fans drinking and dancing before we finally get to some footie action of the early stages but then that's over before you know it and we're almost at the final and there's still over an hour to go! So then we get too much of the final lots of bits where the referee has a go at the players. The music chosen is also very odd especially during the final and on top of all that the narration is laughably bad and at times so pretentious that I don't know what they were thinking. It's a shame that this 'official' documented film of a great World cup is so poorly done. (3/10)
