Victory (or ‘Escape to Victory’ as it was known in Europe) boasted a cornucopia of famous soccer stars who were cast as the Allied Prisoners of War. A small sample of these players included: Bobby Moore, the Captain of the 1966 England World Cup winning team, and considered to be one of the best defenders of all time. John Wark, the Scottish star who led Ipswich Town to the UEFA Cup that year. Osvaldo Ardiles, an Argentine star who was then a skilled midfielder for the Tottenham Hotspur. Kazimierez Denya, who was then starring for Manchester City and is one of the best Polish players of all time. We could have continued with a roll call that would mean something to Europeans, but to the North American market in 1981, only one soccer player was known in this film; Pele. Actually, Pele was probably the ONLY soccer player that most Americans could have named back then. The Brazilian was an international superstar who transcended the sport. Three times, he led Brazil to the World Cup, and was the star (though way past his prime) that propelled the NASL to then relevance. Truthfully, he made soccer known to a degree in the United States, and though the NASL would eventually fold, his name remained in the American sporting mind.
We could hear Germans watching this movie and groaning. Not because of the depiction of them as the bad guys, but by the fact that an American Goalie was could be a force in a game against them. Sure, the United States have embraced soccer to the point where they are fringe World Cup contenders, but in 1981 the Americans had zero interest in the sport, beyond the first wave of badly coiffed soccer moms, so when you mix World War II (which Americans knew) with soccer (which Americans didn’t), you had a movie with sparse interest in North America; with the exception of fans of Sylvester Stallone, who was the aforementioned goalie. Stallone may look like an athlete, but was awkward looking as a goalie (which at least the movie tried to explain). This isn’t “Sly’s” best performance in an athletic role, but it is not his worst, and this is a movie worth checking out on a cable rerun. This however is not the athlete we remember most from the movie as a certain Brazilian had our attention instead.
For the record, we love Michael Caine, and we are sure we are not alone on this. As Captain John Colby in “Victory”, we got to see an actor we love in a sports related film. Colby was a former star in West Ham, who as a Prisoner of War was given the task to organize a team to play against the Germans, which he did so in return for better conditions for the prisoners. Although Caine was not a trained player, he looked like he belonged (or maybe we are biased, because we think he can do wrong…..even when he is). Yet, this film holds more weight in the United Kingdom than it does in the U.S., and as we are on the Western side of the Atlantic, we are not going to count on a lot of support for one of our favorite Englishmen.
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