Two Billion Hearts

This is a 1995 FIFA documentary concerning the 1994 World Cup: 

Who knew that since 1954, FIFA has produced a film of each World Cup? I was ignorant of this until a random Tweet noted this recently, while noting that at least in the United States, all of those movies were on FIFA+, which is on the DAZN platform along with the other sports this platform has. While June hasn’t been great overall, something nice is to have the World Cup games on in the background while I sometimes do other things or listen to other audio.

I usually don’t watch soccer (as us Dumb Americans call it) although I’ve gone to some games live in Orlando. I’ll give my thoughts on this current tournament at the end of the review. For a service that was free, I was quite happy that only one ad played before the film began, and never again.

It made sense to see the film of the 1994 tournament, a.k.a. the first time this extravaganza came to the United States. The presentation was largely what you’d expect: after an opening where Americans were ignorant of soccer-accurate; it was only a few years after this that Major League Soccer began & the sport was more niche here back then-various contenders were featured in a logical order which wasn’t always chronological but was never confusing. Backstories were provided for each team that added context. Aside from the audio dropping out for a few seconds and-mainly when changing reels-the footage looked ROUGH, otherwise the print quality was pretty good.

Sure, this wasn’t perfect. A tragic moment was after the tournament when Colombia’s Andres Escobar was murdered in his country, probably due to allowing an own goal against the United States—that was only briefly mentioned at the conclusion. I suppose fanaticism leading to a murder of a star player probably would be a downer for this sort of documentary… in addition, there’s plenty of dialogue in languages other than English which is never subtitled. Needless to say, I don’t speak any other languages (especially Swedish or Bulgarian) so there’s a decision that can be disagreed with.

Otherwise, a swell job was done in presenting the tournament to those unaware—from the stellar footage shots of the games to the fans both at home and watching in their home countries. The narration is from a familiar voice: Liev Schreiber. I don’t plan on checking out those other FIFA films even if others were narrated by two Bond actors (Brosnan, Connery) among other actors and one was directed by Michael Apted.

A nice story of the ’26 World Cup is how people from around the world have visited America and especially in the United States, have enjoyed the food, customs, people, and everything else. Look at that random German Twitter user Freddy-he and his mates went viral and now are treated like dignitaries to the point that they talked to NASA astronauts on the ISS and will soon meet Ella Langley! The decision to expand the field from 32 to 48 teams is one I don’t agree with… then again, the Spain vs. Cape Verde match is a great story & a casual like me has found the early stages of the tournament to be fun.

I don’t know how many reading this were even alive in ’94-let alone have interest in this era of soccer-but if you want to see footage of Romario and Roberto Baggio…