n “Victory”: John Huston’s 1981 yarn about POWs going toe-to-toe with Nazis is one of the few soccer movies to come out of Hollywood. During filming, Sylvester Stallone fired his trainer, British goalie Gordon Banks. Stallone thought goalkeeping was easy – until he dislocated a shoulder and broke two ribs trying to do it during filming.

n “Shaolin Soccer”: Stephen Chow’s hilarious 2001 comedy tells the story of a rag-tag team assembled by a once-great player that incorporates kung fu into the game. The game scenes are so totally ridiculous that they make “Rocky IV” seem believable. Of course, “Shaolin Soccer” is trying to be funny.

n “Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick”: Wim Wenders’ 1971 film tells the story of a goalkeeper who gets kicked out of a game for committing a foul, only to wind up on the run for committing a crime. It also focuses on the game and the position of the isolated goalie as a microcosm of modern-day chaos.

n “Bend It Like Beckham”: You don’t have to like soccer to love Gurinder Chadha’s 2002 film about a Sikh girl who breaks through cultural barriers on the pitch. It’s feel good, but also transcendent – a story that uses a game to explore the rules and barriers that exist outside the stadium.

n “The Mean Machine”: Soccer player-turned-actor Vinnie Jones (“Snatch”) stars in this 2001 flick about a player who gets busted throwing games and clobbering cops. Yes, it’s a remake of “The Longest Yard.” But “Mean Machine” is a riot in its own right. The criminals are as crazy as they are ridiculous, and the violence is as boneheaded as it is absurd. It’s no surprise Guy Ritchie (“Snatch” and “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”) produced this caper.

n “The Cup”: Even Buddhist monks love soccer in this enchanting 1999 film – the first made in Bhutani – about World Cup fans in a Tibetan monastery.

n “One Day in Europe”: This German/Spanish 2005 movie uses soccer to show that Europe is still a clannish continent inhabited by many rival teams, uh, I mean nations.