93% on Rotten Tomatoes!

Next Goal Wins is Taika Waititi’s best and most crowd-pleasing effort to date. It’s the true tale of American Samoa’s abysmal soccer team gearing up for the 2011 World Cup qualifier under the coaching of Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender), who had just been fired by the U.S. national team. Next Goal Wins is the kind of underdog sports movie that people revere, complete with the inevitable montages of players being put through the training wringer. At the time Rongen took over, the American Samoa national soccer team had long since cemented its reputation as the world’s worst with a record 31-0 loss to Australia in the 2001 World Cup qualifier. That debacle causes Tavita Taumua (Oscar Kightley), head of the Football Federation American Samoa, to berate his team in the locker room and then immediately look for a new coach. The only person who will take the job is Rongen, who can’t get any other position after his short temper gets him fired from the U.S. team. At the urging of his estranged wife, Gail (Elisabeth Moss), he reluctantly heads to American Samoa. Waititi is the perfect filmmaker for this comedy..there’s a lot of heart here.—The Wrap