Aahana Swrup
‘The Beautiful Game,’ Netflix’s inspirational sports drama film, celebrates the global love of football through its exploration of the Homeless World Cup. The narrative focuses on the England Homeless Football Team, led by their manager, Mal Bradley. After retiring from his famed Scouting days, Mal spends his talents coaching a new team every year in the hopes of winning the HWC. Therefore, once a talented player, Vinny Walker, troubled in his current situation, living out of a car, catches Mal’s attention, he decides to make him a last-minute addition to the team.
As such, the England team, with its ragtag bunch of misfits who have found a family in each other, ventures out to Rome, which teaches them lessons about football, camaraderie, and life. At Rome, the HWC host, Gabriella, facilitates the numerous teams’ welcome, standing as a cemented part of the organization. Therefore, considering the real-life basis of the Homeless World Cup, Gabriella’s character may garner some attention regarding her potential roots in reality.
Gabriella: A Fictional Character Representing a Real Organization
‘The Beautiful Game’ finds its authentic ties to reality through its connection to the real-life non-profit organization, The Homeless World Cup. The film extracts stories from the lived experiences of the players and the managers involved in the games to infuse its characters with a sense of realism. Nevertheless, the characters, at their core, remain fictionalized individuals. Given the unique disposition of Italian Actress Valeria Golino’s Gabriella, as a representative of the HWC organization, the character’s connection to fiction and reality becomes more nuanced.
Due to Gabriella’s largely administrative role in the events— as a host to the participants overlooking their stay at the tournament— there are no named real-life counterparts behind her character that one can point to. Nevertheless, her character highlights a crucial aspect of these real-life games by embodying an HWC representative. Director Thea Sharrock and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce worked with the support of the real HWC organization in the film’s development. Consequently, they were able to access an authentic perspective while crafting Gabriella’s character.
The Homeless World Cup is an organization that holds annual tournaments that continue to help numerous people within the unhoused community. They strive to bring significant and transformative change into the lives of their players and advocate for the end of the global issue of homelessness. The organization’s website affirms its mission, “We [HWC] use football as a global support network to help and inspire people struggling to make a home for themselves. We want to create an environment for them in which they are empowered to change their own lives. We want our tournament teams to feel like champions before they’ve even stepped on the pitch.”
Thus, by integrating these values into Gabriella’s character, the film offers a genuine personification of the Homeless World Cup Organization within the narrative. In doing so, the film ensures the viewers have a tangible person to associate with the organization, which helps them actualize their efforts. Throughout the film, Gabriella retains inherently helpful tendencies— both as the event manager and Mal Bradley’s close professional friend. However, outside of introducing the Homeless World Cup tournament and welcoming the participants, Gabriella doesn’t play a significant role in the storyline. As such, her character remains confined to a representation of the HWC’s off-field presence.
For the same reason, we can conclude that while Gabriella represents a real-life organization that remains close to the film’s center, the character itself has little to no roots in reality. Ultimately, she remains a fictitious addition to the narrative, created to facilitate the storyline’s flow and add a corporeal touch to the Homeless World Cup Organization.
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