Michael Laudrup: A Football Player (1993)

With a title parallel to the portrait of ballet dancer Peter Martins, this is also a conventional film portrait, this time of football star Michael Laudrup at the height of his career with the F.C. Barcelona dream team. The film follows Laudrup and his team during training and in matches as they successfully defended their Spanish league championship in spring 1993. Laudrup and the team manager Johan Cruyff present their football philosophy. From the wheel of his car as he drives through Barcelona Laudrup talks about himself and his career, and a number of fans are allowed to describe his qualities as a player. The game is shown by 16 mm footage from the side line, by the use of tempo changes emphasising the ballet-like aspect of Laudrup's movements, and in television footage filmed from the screen as documentation of Laudrup's achievements as a player, as shown here first and foremost by way of goals. The film seems a touch unstructured but it starts and ends with F.C. Barcelona winning the Spanish championships. Dan Holmberg provides a series of atmospheric images from the Catalonian capital which are used as pauses for thought, and in a highly poetic scene deserving separate mention he filmed Laudrup's (staged) ball play with his two young sons in a gapingly empty stadium.