The Forgotten FIFA World Cup Drama Sam Neill Called His Worst Movie

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The death of Sam Neill at age 78 has shocked fans of the acclaimed character actor all over the world. Neill passed away on July 13, 2026, which put his name on every movie fan's lips. Many people are no doubt planning to revisit his films over the coming days, just to remind themselves of how great Neill was at what he did. If you could ask Neill himself, however, there is one particular movie that you should skip.

In his 2023 memoir "Did I Ever Tell You This?" the actor wrote about a project that he considered the worst Sam Neill movie out there. The film in question is the French English-language sports drama "United Passions: The Birth of the World Cup," a FIFA-themed movie from 2014 that Neill never personally saw. Even so, he still had no problem labeling it his worst effort by some margin. 

"Possibly the worst title ever of a film. And I'm reliably told (I haven't seen it) that it is rated as one of the worst films ever made, if not the worst," Neill wrote. "Frankly, I couldn't give a damn. It was financed by FIFA itself, a vanity project if ever there was one. The offer came, and it came with a lot of money. Ridiculous."

Though "United Passions" doesn't make an appearance on Looper's list of worst sports movies of all time, it indeed enjoys quite an atrocious reputation. It belongs to the group of movies that have earned a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and even audiences hated it — the 12% Popcornmeter score suggests that even most soccer fans didn't enjoy it.

"United Passions" is effectively an origin story of both FIFA and the FIFA Wold Cup, with Neill, Tim Roth, and Gérard Depardieu playing real-life FIFA bigshots João Havelange, Sepp Blatter, and Jules Rimet. Not only is the film itself abysmal, but its U.S. release happened in 2015, meaning it coincided with a massive FIFA corruption case that caused the real-life Blatter to resign from his position as the association's president. 

The combination of poor quality and real-life events surrounding its release has effectively made the heroic presentation of "United Passions" both difficult to watch and wildly out of sync with reality. Still, Neill openly admitted that he cared little for the project, earned a nice paycheck, and didn't even have to watch the end product, so at least one person involved in "United Passions" came out as a winner.