At his first practice with the new football team, Jonas meets Niklas. After a party, they end up at Niklas’ house. Cuddled up, the two friends fall asleep. Their closeness does not go unnoticed. The team wins the next game, but the distance between them seems insurmountable.
Youth football training sessions are, for many, the only moments of physical interaction between boys, who find in sport a way of showing their emotions. Winning or losing as a team, playing well, committing and fighting for others are ways of demonstrating qualities that otherwise have little room to exist. Football, perhaps more than most men’s team sports, allows you to express emotions that would otherwise be difficult to express. Fragility, however, is not always understood in these environments where the team is one, but each boy his own. “Winners” takes us from a football training session to a party and back to training the next day. That night, two team-mates get physically close. Back on the pitch, this closeness is rendered meaningless by the codes of the game. Affection and tenderness have their own manifestations on the pitch; off it, everything is questionable. (Margarida Moz)
