It appears that the while the sport is slowly gaining in popularity in the States (thanks for the visit Mr.Beckham), that films serving or basing themselves on the sport are fast growing as well. Variety reports that after a massive “bidding war” Universal Pictures have scored the sweet rights to The Fugees.
This tells not the story of the now defunct hip hop trio, instead the to-be-scripted by Andrea Berloff and based on the New York Times article by Warren St. John tells the story of a group of kids from such war-torn countries as Afghanistan, Bosnia, Burundi, Congo, Gambia, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan who were placed in Clarkston, Ga., a town that after a few years began to turn against the new arrivals. When a Jordan-born woman named Luma Mufleh arrived, she started a soccer program, cracking the kids' distrust of authority and helping their families cope with new life in the U.S. Mufleh and her players, called the Fugees after “refugees,” overcame much adversity and ended up squaring off against the kids of an elite Atlanta soccer academy.
Whether you call it football or soccer, there is more to this sport than getting kids off crack, it blurs language barriers and mixes cultures in a healthy manner especially at this level. For more on this remarkable true life story follow this link: http://www.fugeesfamily.org/.
