Mike Summerbee describes the lasting legacy of Victory, where Pelé and Stallone starred together

Manchester City legend Mike Summerbee reveals what it was like behind the scenes of the iconic football movie Victory in an exclusive interview with GOAL.

The football movie Victory combined the jobs of actors with footballers in the making of the film

When Mike Summerbee got a call from Bobby Moore asking if he wanted to be involved in the making of a film about football, he didn’t realise exactly what he was signing up for. More than 40 years since its release, the film is still considered a cult classic and one of the greatest sports movies of all time.

Set during World War II, Victory tells the fictional story of a team of Allied prisoners of war who agree to play a football match against Nazi Germany as an excuse for their escape from prison.

The film was directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker John Huston and had an all-star cast including Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone and Max von Sydow. But what was unique about the filming was the amount of real football players.

Summerbee and Moore knew each other as teenagers and lived together on the road with Albion, so it was no surprise that the former star defender talked him into filming. But there were also roles for former Tottenham player Osvaldo Ardiles, Ipswich Town players John Wark, Russell Osman and Kevin O’Callaghan, and the most memorable star of all, Brazilian Pelé.

Summerbee recalls the making of the film

“Footballers wanted to be actors and actors wanted to be footballers,” Summerbee recalled of the making of the film , according to Goal. “We enjoyed each other’s company, and the actors helped us be actors, and we helped one or two of them be footballers,” he said, describing with wonder the collaboration of two different professions.

Filming took place in Hungary in the summer of 1980 before the start of the new season, with Summerbee having just played his last professional game for Stockport County. At the time, Hungary was part of the Eastern Bloc and there were restrictions on what the cast and crew could do when they weren’t filming.

“Budapest is a beautiful city and even though everything was restricted, we were fine with it,” Sumerbee recalled. “We stayed in a beautiful hotel and there was amazing Beluga caviar, it was so cheap we bought loads of it and brought it home with us,” the former City footballer recounted.

Locals were stunned by Pelé’s arrival, but the Brazilian superstar was part of the family on the shoot and was affectionately known as “Eddie”, which is short for his full name Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Pele and Moore had huge respect for each other when they met in the famous match between Brazil and England at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.

The football film was particularly successful because of the verisimilitude of the football action

What has helped the film stand the test of time is the narrative, but also the verisimilitude of the football scenes. These feel much more believable than in many other sports films. Care has been taken to make them as realistic as possible.

Stallone was even assisted by former England goalkeeper Gordon Banks to make his action scenes in goal seem more believable. But even that didn’t stop the man who played Rocky and Rambo from dislocating his shoulder after throwing himself at the ball.

The success of the film was certainly helped by the plot. Often in sports fiction, the heroes of the story inevitably come to success in the last act, but in this film the script is very realistic. The heroes of the film, on the Allied side, don’t even win the main match and score a 4-4 draw. Stallone supposedly wanted to score the winning goal at the time, but given that he was the goalkeeper, the story would have been too far-fetched.

“We helped make a soccer movie with the experience we all had,” Summerbee explained. “The film is still being shown, so it shows that it was quite successful as a football film.”

It’s true that even after four decades, there is still an audience for one of the best sports films ever made, and in the football scene, apart from documentaries, it has its place in the highest echelons.

Source