The Other Final

The Other Final (2003)

The Other Final is a 2003 documentary film, directed by Johan Kramer, about a football match between Bhutan and Montserrat, the then-lowest ranked teams in the FIFA World Rankings.

Date of release
2003-09-25
TMDB
7.7 / 10 (10)
Runtime
1h 18m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Johan Kramer

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Changlimithang Stadium

The Other Final is a 2003 documentary film, directed by Johan Kramer of Dutch communications agency KesselsKramer, about a football match between Bhutan and Montserrat, the then-lowest ranked teams in the FIFA World Rankings. The game was played in the Changlimithang Stadium, Thimphu, Bhutan on 30 June 2002, the same day as the 2002 FIFA World Cup final. Bhutan won the game 4–0, their first ever victory and the first time they had kept a clean sheet. The friendly match, officially sanctioned by FIFA, saw Bhutan rise out of the bottom two of the world rankings and kept Montserrat in last place. The referee was Englishman Steve Bennett.

Background

In 2002, Montserrat were ranked last in the world FIFA rankings with Bhutan second last. Prior to their meeting, Bhutan, who first competed in 1982, had never won an official match (they had one victory over Tibet, who are not FIFA members so the match was not officially sanctioned), whilst Montserrat, who made their debut in 1950 had only managed two victories, both against Anguilla in the 1995 Caribbean Cup, in their entire history.

Montserrat had also suffered their own significant misfortunes, when the Soufrière Hills erupted causing widespread devastation to the island. Seismic activity had occurred in 1897–1898, 1933–1937, and again in 1966–1967, but the eruption that began on 18 July 1995 was the first since the 16th century in Montserrat.

At the same time, with the Netherlands having failed to qualify for the 2002 FIFA World Cup, two Dutch ad-agency partners, Johan Kramer and Matthijs de Jongh, not having their home team to cheer on pondered who the worst team in the world might be.

Three weeks prior to the match, Dutch coach Arie Schans flew out to Bhutan to take temporary charge of the side and took four hour long daily training sessions with the team in order to prepare them for the match. There was a considerable deal of anticipation in Thimphu prior to the game, though the Bhutan Football Federation sought to play down the importance of victory, saying it was more important to focus on participation than winning.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended