04 October 2023 , 05:00
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The scene was set in Marseille for Newcastle United’s biggest match in decades.
The local crowd had set fire to the moat around the pitch, and the temperature on the pitch, and terrace, was hot. A UEFA Cup semi-final second leg in 2004, with the score goalless, and no distractions, no extra burdens, wanted. But up and down the touchline they scurried. Actors dressed in Newcastle United kit. You could tell they were impostors.
The way they struck the ball, or the way they moved, unlike the pro athletes around them. Here we were with Sir Bobby Robson’s men a goal away from a European final… with thespians shooting the first take of the iconic Goal! movie getting in the way! In the dressing room, the actors sat next to players, with the cameras trying to get realistic shots. All very bizarre.
Goal! would go on to become a global football hit trilogy charting the rise of Santiago Muñez, played by Kuno Becker, to fame and fortune taking £27million at the box-office. But this was the production team’s first crack at making it work. The hope was to splice real life high octane football footage, hence their invasion of the Marseille pitch.
The press pack, never shy when a camera is pointed at them, also joined in. After Sir Bobby had done his pre-game press conference in the Marseille Stadium, in came the pretend actor manager, and we staged a press conference, hoping for our own big break in Hollywood!
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Trouble was, this first take was all a bit rubbish. Sir Bobby was a better showman than all of them. The real thing had more drama and plotlines. All the footage from Marseille was eventually ditched and they started from scratch after “creative differences”.
It was the end of a great Euro campaign, the Toon bouncing back from losing to Partizan Belgrade in the Champions League qualifying round, to progress to the UEFA Cup last four. A goalless draw at St James’s Park saw Didier Drogba shackled by the brilliant Jonathan Woodgate, but he was injured for the away leg.
The Newcastle United who played Marseille in the UEFA Cup semi-final second leg (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)Drogba netted twice to win the game. He nabbed the man of the match champagne, and helpfully came into the press conference room to give us all a soaking in bubbly while roaring with delight, sending laptops on the blink. He moved to Chelsea that summer.
I wrote a critical piece on the Goal! debacle in The Mirror. I appreciated it was a project that would ultimately grab Newcastle worldwide exposure, and was recently cited by Callum Wilson as a small reason why he joined Newcastle. But disruption before a UEFA Cup semi final? Ridiculous.
A couple of days later the phone rang. It was Freddy Shepherd’s son Kenneth. “My dad wants a word….” Club chairman Freddy wasn’t happy with the coverage, and I defended it in an exchange of opinions. Thankfully Freddy, a proper ambitious owner who lived the dream of trying to win things, rarely held a grudge for long.
Didier Drogba downed Newcastle that night (GERARD JULIEN/AFP via Getty Images)So how did the squad feel? As usual it took a few years for their real feelings to come to the fore. Striker Michael Bridges was on the bench that day. His verdict? "We had so many actors around the training ground doing stupid f*****g things on the pitch.
"I just thought we're in the UEFA Cup semi-final, and we've got all these actors on the plane and it felt like it was more about getting the money from the movie than getting everything right for our schedule.
"It didn't go down well, and you could tell Alan Shearer and the rest were a bit p***sed off. You can't relax and be yourself, or talk about the things the lads would usually like. The cameras were always on, trying to get scenes with actors sitting next to the players.
Kuno Becker starred in the Goal! films (WireImage/ Getty Images)“The actors couldn't kick a bloody ball around. There wasn't enough good footage of them. It ended up getting scrapped and started again the following year. I ended up watching and thinking that wasn't the same guy on the plane with us!
"The club was getting a lot of money from it, and we just had to get on with it. You don't think of it as a player at the time, you just think this is p*****g me off and it's a hindrance. But when you look back, it was a distraction you didn't need at a time when you're going for a place in the final.”
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