Filmed in 1970, Football As Never Before (Fußball wie noch nie) is a seminal sports documentary that was re-discovered and revived by a Dublin cellist.
With music by Mogwai, cinematography by the multi award nominated Darius Khondji (Delicatessen, Se7en, Amour, Midnight In Paris) and direction by Turner prize winning visual artist Douglas Gordon and French artist Philippe Parreno, it’s easy to assume that the balletic Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait was the first of its kind. With stunning graceful visuals and music, the documentary made the viewer feel they were on the pitch, part of the team and it was rightly lauded on release.
But 36 years earlier a German filmmaker, Hellmuth Costard, followed the legendary Manchester United player George Best around the pitch as his team beat Coventry City 2-0 on September 12th 1970. Using eight 16mm cameras, every move over the course of the match’s ninety minutes is captured, showcasing Best’s skill and athleticism while proving the true extent to which the sport is all about teamwork. Made at the height of Best’s fame and tabloid notoriety, Costard’s film focuses insistently on Best—warming up, looking restless and bored, waiting tactically to unleash his genius—rather than the on-pitch action to arrive at a sublime and revealing rumination on celebrity and a tantalizing glimpse of the man behind the myth.
The film is the far less touted spiritual predecessor to ‘Zidane…’ but through the efforts of Dubliner Matthew Nolan and other notable musicians Ernst Reijseger, David Stalling and Bryan O’Connell – who composed a new soundtrack to the film – the film was rescued, and performed live in tandem with a screening of the movie for the 10th anniversary of Best’s death. The Guardian picked up on it and now, ten years later, Nolan is revisiting to commemorate the 20th anniversary with a performance in our National Concert Hall. The 11 strong team assembled for the performance is a who’s who of Irish talent with Nolan on electric guitar / lap steel guitar / synth, Bryan O’Connell on drums / percussion, Damien Lennon on bass, Lisa Dowdall on viola, Ellie O’Neill on modular synth, Seán Mac Erlaine on woodwinds / electronics, Mary Barnecutt on cello, Kevin Murphy on cello, Sharon Phelan on vocals and Matthew Jacobson on percussion / synth.
Football As Never Before (Fußball wie noch nie) is legendary among soccer aficionados and one of the great works of post-WWII German cinema, but is little known here and rarely screened. Like the film, Hellmuth Costard (1940-2000), is a little known director. He was part of the vibrant New German Cinema movement of the 1960s and 70s – which included Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and others – that revitalised and revolutionised German film. Costard was more of an avant-gardist than the better-known names of the period, and his work is more often aligned with Alexander Kluge, Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, and Klaus Wyborny. His work ranges from experimental films, allusive narratives, documentaries, children’s television and a child’s storybook, to magazine cartoons.
Nolan, who first spotted the film at a German Festival says “As a musician with an interest in film scoring, it struck me then that the film could serve an alternative and more creative musical response – or even soundtrack. Even though Football As Never Before was a pioneering piece of cinematic art by an experimental German film-maker, back in 1971 it had limited distribution options. I think if it had been made today it would have received similar exposure to the Zidane movie. It is a source of some annoyance that in all the press attention the Zidane film got, nobody acknowledged that there was a precursor in Best.” Nolan laughingly admits that he is a Liverpool fan rather than a Manchester United supporter but had been obsessed with Best since he was a child.
The film score, which Nolan said was “requiem-like”, includes an arrangement from cellist Ernst Reijseger who has produced music for five of Werner Herzog’s movies. Nolan’s compositions have been performed in places like Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art and New York’s Lincoln Center and is just back from a trip to Japan where he performed Kwaidan at the World Expo 2025 in Osaka, part of Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival’s programme of events celebrating Hallowe’en at the Expo.
Words: John Brereton
FOOTBALL AS NEVER BEFORE (Fußball wie noch nie)
National Concert Hall, Monday November 24th. Tickets: nch.ie
Introduced by Connell Vaughan, School of Art and Design, at TUD.
