Movies and TV shows involving Americans in soccer

It’s perhaps the most-famous example of “An American in the world of Soccer,” or in this case Football. To think, it all started with an ad campaign for a defunct network. Jason Sudeikis stars as the titular Ted Lasso, an American football coach who becomes an English football manager even though he doesn’t really know the sport. The first season of “Ted Lasso” was really good! The second season read its press clipping a bit too much but was mostly good! The third season is kind of a disaster! Why is there going to be a fourth season!?

For children of the ‘90s, “Ladybugs” might be the foremost soccer-based work of fiction. The premise is simple: What if Rodney Dangerfield coached a girls’ soccer team? Basically every Rodney Dangerfield role was just him playing himself. Also, Jonathan Brandis plays a boy cajoled into pretending to be a girl to be a ringer for the team. The ‘90s!

“Air Bud” saw Buddy play basketball. The first sequel, “Golden Receiver,” took to the world of football. Then, they moved onto the next obvious pun, even if Buddy is not a puppy. In “World Pup,” once again Buddy finds himself inexplicably capable of playing a sport, and once again there are no rules against it. Buddy joins Josh’s soccer team, and then the movie ends with Buddy helping the U.S. women’s team win the World Cup. Seriously.

Not “Kicking and Screaming,” the 1995 Noah Baumbach movie. Definitely do not conflate the two. This movie is from the floundering era of Will Ferrell sports comedies. Ferrell and the late Robert Duvall star as a son and father who coach rival youth soccer teams. Mike Ditka cameos. There are, like, five better Will Ferrell sports comedies.

Once the Sprouse twins, Cole and Dylan, were old enough, they got the Olsens treatment and started to work together, as opposed to playing the same child. Their primary work was the Disney show “The Suite Life of Zack  & Cody,” but before that, there was “Just for Kicks.” They play kids on a soccer team. That’s about the extent of the premise. Tom Arnold is in it, though.

It makes sense that multiple, half-baked soccer properties have been titled “Just for Kicks.” This Nickelodeon show aimed for teens debuted in 2006, a few years after the Sprouse vehicle. The two are not related, though. “Just for Kicks” focuses on four girls who join their school soccer team. The show only lasted one season, but it is notable for being an early role for Jessica Williams.

During the heyday of Amanda Bynes’ career, she starred in this reimagining of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” It’s a loose adaptation, to be sure, as the original has strikingly little soccer in it. Bynes plays a girl who pretends to be her brother to play for his prep school’s soccer team. Do romantic complications ensue for her at the school wherein she is pretending to be a boy? Naturally.

If you aren’t a “Ladybugs” aficionado, maybe you were more of a “The Big Green” kid. This is more of a run-of-the-mill ragtag youth sports team movie. A British girl moves to Texas and recruits her fellow students to play on a soccer team. They’re bad, then they get better, and Steven Guttenberg is there.

For a movie that essentially does not exist, “Bad Parents” has a notable cast. Surprisingly, this movie predates “Bad Moms” and all its knockoffs. This film is about soccer moms who get too invested in their kids playing the sport. Janeane Garafalo, Christopher Titus, Kristen Johnston, and Cheri Oteri are all in this movie.

Gerard Butler stars in this film as a washed-up soccer star from Scotland who comes to America, but there are of course thus Americans and soccer intermingling. It’s a romantic comedy involving sports announcing, coaching youth soccer, and soccer moms being horny for Gerard Butler. As one might expect from a 2010s Butler vehicle, it isn’t terribly good.

Also known as “Escape to Victory,” this movie is sort of like if “The Longest Yard” had higher stakes. The film retains the premise of prisoners being pressured into an exhibition game they are supposed to lose, but this time the prisoners are Allied POWs during World War II, and the soccer team is German. The movie, directed by John Huston, has a wild cast. Michael Caine, Max von Sydow, and Pele are all in it. There is one American in the mix, though, and he’s played by Sylvester Stallone.

Another movie with Pele in the cast. That makes sense, because he was the best player of his generation, maybe the best player ever, and a true crossover star. This time Pele really stretches himself playing a legendary Brazilian soccer player. “Hotshot” is about an American who goes down to Brazil to learn the game from him in order to be the best.

Steve Guttenberg returns to this list, which makes sense. Like Pele, he is inherently tied to the sport of soccer in the minds of Americans. This Canadian production is akin to “The Mighty Ducks,” but it’s about soccer and does not have the kind of money Disney could cough up. Guttenberg plays a former pro soccer player who as part of his probation deal becomes a handyman at a home for boys whose parents can’t take care of them. Does he take those boys and turn them into a ragtag soccer team? Naturally.

Hooliganism is not nearly as rampant as it was once upon a time, but that doesn’t mean the lurid fascination with it has abated at all. Plus, if you want to make a movie about day-to-day violence, soccer hooligans offer it. Elijah Wood plays an American expelled from college who goes to England to visit his sister. He meets her husband’s younger brother, the leader of a local group of hooligans. Wood’s character becomes indoctrinated into their world where football games are mostly an excuse for territorial acts of violence.

If you don’t know why we’re including “Home Improvement” here, you must have stopped watching it by the last couple seasons. Yes, the show centered on Tim “The Toolman” Taylor, but it was a family sitcom, and the Taylors had three kids. The eldest, Brad, excelled at soccer. By the end of the show, he has a chance at a soccer scholarship, a chance to go to North Carolina, then one of the best men’s soccer teams in the nation, has a chance to go pro, and then deals with a knee injury that possibly could end his career. Basically, Brad’s storylines mostly became about soccer.

Hear us out. Yes, this is a movie about baseball, specifically about Jimmy Fallon as a rabid Boston Red Sox fan. What does it have to do with Americans and soccer? More than you might think. It’s basically a recontextualization of soccer fandom for American audiences. Nick Hornby wrote the memoir “Fever Pitch” about his intense, sometimes destructive, fandom of Arsenal. In 1997, it was turned into a movie in Britain starring Colin Firth, and it was still about an Arsenal fan. When “Fever Pitch” was adapted for American audiences, soccer became baseball, and Arsenal became the Red Sox. If that’s not the American prism through which soccer is understood, then what is?