I find it sometimes difficult to explain to people who don't like football or never played it when they were kids the joy that 22 grown men kicking a ball can produce for fans of the sport. The World Cup is maybe the only instance of a tournament where I've seen people who never cared about football or played it bursting with tears of joy or sorrow due to the final score a match.
There are cultural rituals that define communities of people, be it using symbols or using more authentic elements like the emotion that particular ritual produces. For historical reasons football is possibly the most popular, beloved and hated sport in the world. No matter what you think about football its most fundamental aspect is the emotional trigger it has on people. That emotional connection can have an incredible inspiring power for the community and can serve as a bond.
Sadly we see in 2014 with the current World Cup in Brazil that corporate powers like FIFA try to take advantage of the power that this beautiful sport has over people and abuse it, but somehow the essential, uncorrupted inspiring force that is football survives and prevails over the more mundane profit machinery.
For a small country like Costa Rica football is one of those inspiring cultural essentials. The title of small country permeates everything and everyone here which makes it a psychological and spiritual burden. If you are treated like the underdog all your life then you see yourself as the underdog and nothing more and you accept it without to much questioning. This is where the inspiring power of football becomes a important catalyst for change, transformation and growth. For many what the Costa Rican football team that played in Italy's 1990 World Cup did was not such a big deal but for the country in general it was a transforming psychological power. It helped create a new perspective where what was once impossible was now possible, where confidence grew and possibilities seemed endless.
This small low budgeted film is a tribute to that, to a small group of hard working and humble men that managed to inspire a country and an entire generation. I don't expect a non Costa Rican to fully grasp the significance of what happened in Italy, the film certainly feels made by Costa Ricans for Costa Ricans and maybe that's how it should be.
