“Damned United” and the tragedy at Leeds

BOSTON — American soccer devotees spend a lot of time despairing the lack of a soccer culture in this country.

But there is no doubt that something different is afoot here. A few years ago, a movie like “The Damned United” might never have kicked up on these shores.

“The Damned United” is a genuine soccer movie, not a fantasy about Keira Knightley and other lithe and lovely, young women kicking a ball about. Indeed, I can’t remember a movie in which women had less prominence.

The damned United in question is not, as most would assume, the current team from Manchester, the English soccer juggernaut that has won the last three Premier League championships. Rather it is Leeds United, a power back before the Thatcher revolution, when teams from England’s hardscrabble north could still compete on the field with the big-city teams from Manchester, Liverpool and London.

But the story is that of the late and legendary Brian Clough, recalled in England as the greatest soccer coach who never coached the English national team. Clough was a man with the motivational powers of Vince Lombardi and the media savvy of Muhammad Ali. He came to prominence as a coach with Derby County, a small team in the northern hinterlands that he guided from the Second Division into the First and then — to the amazement of the soccer establishment — to a championship.

Success, however remarkable, is seldom as interesting as failure. So the film focuses on Clough’s disastrous 44-day tenure at Leeds in 1974. Clough had been the surprise choice to succeed the renowned Don Revie, who, following back-to-back titles at Leeds, had left to coach England in the wake of its bitter failure to qualify for the ’74 World Cup.

Calling “Damned United” a genuine soccer movie is, of course, meant as high praise. But it has loftier ambitions than your typical sports film. Based on the 2006 novel “The Damned Utd,” it boasts a script by Peter Morgan who has become the standard — (“Frost/Nixon, “The Queen,” “The Last King of Scotland”) — for literate cinema. And a star turn by Michael Sheen, who — first as Tony Blair and later as David Frost — was remarkably deft in playing second fiddle to Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth and Frank Langella’s Richard Nixon.

While Clough’s failure at Leeds may not quite approach Shakespearean in its tragic scope, the film offers a marvelous glimpse at a remarkable personality, heretofore unknown in this country, as well as a smart meditation on the pitfalls of hubris and related character flaws.

The new coach arrived at Leeds bearing a grudge against Revie for what he believed to be a snub back when Clough was still a minor-league anonymity. Asked by reporters about the difficulty in following Revie’s triumphant reign, Clough pointedly noted the team’s failure to win a European crown.

Clough had never made it a secret how much he deplored Leeds’ playing style under Revie. The team favored the rough and, often, dirty — akin to U.S. sports champions like Philadelphia’s NHL “Broad Street Bullies” or Detroit’s NBA “Bad Boys” — and Clough opined publicly that it was the very antithesis of what the game should be.

It apparently never occurred to him that his contempt for what had preceded him might threaten his tenure. And indeed it was met in kind by Leeds’ veteran players and, from the very start, doomed his high-minded efforts to reform the team’s play.

At Derby County, Clough’s success had been very much a partnership affair. While he was the public face of the team and its big-think strategist, he delegated technical matters and day-to-day player relations to his more genial assistant, Peter Taylor. Yet despite all his success, it was still a bumpy road. He wound up quitting Derby — he never believed the resignation would be accepted — after a flare-up with the board of directors over expenditures.

Clough’s only suitor was Third-Division Brighton, a seaside town far removed from his home turf. When Leeds surprisingly beckoned him back to the north a year later, Clough bolted — while Parker stayed behind, unwilling to break his word to Brighton’s ownership.

Clough found himself alone at the top of the heap. There was nobody alongside to caution him, to temper his tongue or to perform damage control after his inevitable clashes with players and management. He was fired after the defending league champs won just one of its first seven games.

Even after the thorny departures from Derby and Brighton and the cataclysm at Leeds, Clough would get another chance — back with a small northern team, Nottingham Forest, little more than a free kick’s distance from Derby County. And back this time with Taylor riding shotgun.

Nottingham Forest had a proud soccer tradition dating back to the 1850s. But when Clough took over there mid-season in 1975, the team was mired, as it had been for most of the 20th century, in the Second Division — and in the bottom half to boot. A somewhat chastened and relatively muted Clough proceeded to effect one of the most remarkable transformations in English soccer history.

In his first full season at Nottingham Forest, the team finished third, earning a promotion into the First Division. And in its first year playing up among the big lads, Nottingham won the league title, seven points ahead of a mighty Liverpool team that would capture the European championship. The following year Clough’s team won the first of back-to-back European crowns, the one title that had eluded Leeds and Revie.

Clough would remain at Nottingham Forest for almost two decades during which he would win more than 400 games. But what would always elude Clough was what remained his greatest dream — to coach England