Mike Bassett: England Manager Details

This sports satire is arguably the best football film ever made, and unarguably the funniest — barring Escape to Victory and When Saturday Comes, which weren't actually meant to be funny. Thanks to the minimal use of on-field action sequences we are spared the embarrassment of watching players who can't act and actors who can't play. Instead, the film focuses on the boardroom, back-room and dressing-room shenanigans that ensue after a lower-league soccer boss is made England manager. Bassett is played with a nice mix of humour and pathos by Ricky Tomlinson, as the sort of old-school supremo who scribbles his team selection on the back of a fag packet — then is gobsmacked that no-hopers Benson and Hedges have been enlisted into the squad. When the team flukes its way into the World Cup in Brazil, Bassett is faced with the task of turning his individual allsorts — boy-wonder forward, high-living midfielder et al — into a winning side. Keep an eye open for cameos by two great soccer icons, Pele and Gabby Logan (née Yorath).

To the modern game of English football, Mike Bassett ought to be an irrelevance, a lower league journeyman player... read more on Time Out