The Damned United: A Man Before His Time

The Damned United starring Michael Sheen as famous English coach Brian Clough. Clough was as put in the film, "the best English manager that England never had." He took teams from the bottom and rose them to new heights and glories they never dreamed of.

In the film Sheen portrays the confident and loud aura Clough brought to his teams, and the discontent he felt during his brief stay at Leeds United (hence the Damned in The Damned United). At all of his other teams the team saw improvement under him.

The movie shows the stress it is to be a manager, and also a good friend. Clough gave up his and his partners job because he was so thick headed he didn't want to be pushed around.

Clough was an amazing coach but some of his styles were criticized at the time, but wouldn't ever be put into back in the timeline of the film. He was ahead of his time in how he coached the game.

I highly recommend this movie, especially if you like football (soccer in America) and good stories on and about football.

I know this is the second English based movie I have done lately but bear with me, I promise it will be my last for awhile. It's just I ordered it and it finally came, I couldn't help myself.

The main thing I got out of this movie though was the way a friendship can be pushed to the very edge, and people can still be friends with an apology, or in the case of the movie a grovel.

I feel like we all close ourselves of to the possibility of an apology to another person. We don't let ourselves forgive. I know we all think why should we? In most cases we got screwed over. But I believe strongly in one thing, we all need to forgive people for their mistakes towards us because then we become more like God and more like Jesus. God doesn't hold grudges towards us, but one of our favorite things to do is hold a grudge over somebody elses head.

In the film Clough is forgiven by his long time assistant coach Peter Taylor, played by Timothy Spall, because he ruined the happiness of his career. While the pair are basically showed as brothers, sometimes those are the hardest type of people to forgive.

Trust me it was a very small theme in the film to notice, but sometimes it's best to realize things when their not flashing right in front of us and we have to think.

How do you forgive, or do you even forgive? I know I struggle with this maybe that's why I realized it.