Tom Hopper’s The Damned United is a fun British sports drama based on David Pearce’s novel of the same name. Starring Michael Sheen as Brian Clough, the film opens in select U.S. theaters today (it already ran in the U.K. and Ireland). It tells the story of Clough’s tumultuous 44 days in charge of Leeds United in 1974.

Or does it?

We can’t really be sure exactly what (or whose) story the film tells and therein lies the first problem. The novel upon which it is based is apparently fraught with inaccuracies–to the point that Clough’s family said it essentially created a purely fictional character from scratch and attached Brian Clough’s name to it. Johnny Giles, the “Irishman” from the film, even went as far as to successfully sue the publishers over how he was portrayed in the book.

Giles is largely spared in the film. Not so the other protagonists. Don Revie (played by Colm Meanie), Clough’s predecessor at Leeds United and his nemesis in the film, comes across as a scowling villain who encourages cheating and dirty play. Billy Bremner (Stephen Graham), the team’s Scottish captain and centerback, is a thug in Revie’s image who undermines Clough and all but leads a mutiny against him. Sam Longson (Jim Broadbent), the chairman of Derby County (Clough’s employer before he was hired by Leeds), a bottom line-obsessed businessman who refuses to give Clough the rope or respect he needs and forces his ouster.

Clough himself is portrayed as an arrogant, foul-mouthed bully with no respect for authority, a “my way or the highway” approach to coaching and a penchant for one-liners. Apparently, not all of these are all that far from the truth, according to some who remember Clough, though Clough’s family apparently took issue with the cursing bit. (They have in fact boycotted both the book and the film. No word on whether they passed up any of the royalties). The others? Who knows for sure, but it is somewhat telling that Revie, Bremner, Longson and Peter Taylor (Clough’s assistant) are dead and thus unable to claim libel. (As any journalism student knows, you cannot libel the dead).

Okay, so there are inaccuracies. Big deal. This is a movie after all. Hopefully we all know not to take these things at face value, even (especially?) when they are “based on true events.”

Unfortunately, the film has other issues as well. It lacks a coherent plot, for example. There is none of the traditional buildup, climax and denouement. The viewer feels as if he has tuned into a the middle of a series without having seen the first episodes. Just as he feels he is getting used to this reality, the film starts to jump around chronologically. A (somewhat) clearer picture eventually begins to emerge but again, there is no real narrative. This may work for British audiences familiar (many intimately) with Clough’s story and for continental viewers used to a plodding storyline, but in the U.S. it could spell trouble at the box office.

What we are left with is a film that captures a time (the late 1960s and early 70s) and place (Northern England) that was one of the sport’s golden ages. For U.S. soccer fans, who perhaps have not been following the game for very long, this is great stuff. Did these teams really play in rickety wooden stadiums packed into working-class neighborhoods, as Derby County do in the film? Did players really smoke and eat oranges at halftime? Were the matches really full-tilt battles fought (sometimes quite literally) on muddy, rain-soaked fields without proper drainage? Yes, yes and yes. English football really has come this far, this fast, going from little more than local bloodsport to corporate mainstream in less than a generation’s time. For U.S. audiences, this is hard to believe. Our professional athletes were millionaires with TV commercials and traveling entourages by 1974, Even then they plied their trade in massive stadiums with every modern amenity, as well as on live TV (something that didn’t come to Europe until the late 1980s). The Damned United brings to life an era that is part of living memory in Britain and Europe, but which hasn’t figured into the North American Zeitgeist since, well, before any of our lifetimes. For this reason, U.S. soccer fans need to see it. Everybody else can safely stay away.