he shoots, he scores!
Films and football - it's not exactly been a marriage made in heaven, has it? Think Sylvester Stallone in Escape To Victory or Sean Bean in When Saturday Comes? It was a no score on both counts.
Goal! - this week's glossy big-screen soccer drama - is hell-bent on eradicating those execrable celluloid visions of the beautiful game.
It aims to achieve a seamless blend of convincing on-the-field action for the hardcore fans, and a compelling personal drama with an appeal beyond a sporting audience.
Goal! is the first of an ambitious trilogy, following the fictional rags-to-riches tale of a young Mexican player whose dazzling on-pitch skills lead him from the rough barrios of Los Angeles to the heady heights of British Premiership football - and a place on the team of Newcastle United. In the two planned sequels, he's transferred to Real Madrid before finding ultimate glory in the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
With cameo roles from David Beckham, Alan Shearer and Zin dine Zidane, Goal! clearly has its eyes on an audience familiar with football's A-list.
But its more lasting triumph should be the making of a new international star - the very camera-friendly, 27-year-old Kuno Becker, who plays the film's crucial central character, Santiago Munez.
Mexican-born Becker, already a pin-up in his native Latin America and Spanish-speaking areas of the US, was picked after a series of auditions with a large cross-section of Hispanic actors who could play football. Yet once he'd landed the role, he clearly had his work cut out.
He trained for five weeks - four or five hours of rigorous football practice a day - under the tutelage of football consultant and choreographer Andy Ansah, whose experience combines 12 years as a professional footballer player in England, and six seasons as coach/adviser on the Sky TV drama Dream Team.
"Sure, it has been hard for me," says Becker.
"I played football in school, but obviously not to this standard.
"My body wasn't used to it and there are times during that process when your body says 'Hey, what are you doing to me!'
"So obviously I'm never going to be able to play like those guys, but we were just trying to get as close as we could."
Indeed, Becker truly suffered for his art while training for the role of a lifetime.
He managed to break both his ankles and was temporarily laid up during his all-important physical preparation before the cameras rolled.
"I ended up with stress fractures and I wasn't able to walk for weeks," he recalls with a grimace.
"The doctor said to me, 'I hate to tell you this, but you're never going to be a footballer!' and that wasn't what I wanted to hear.
"At the end of the day, those guys have been playing since they were three or four-years-old. I'm just lucky to have been given the opportunity to be a footballer in a movie and I'm a better footballer now."
Becker speaks three languages - but Geordie wasn't one of them.
"When we were filming in Newcastle, it took months for me to get the hang of the accent," he admits.
But there were no language barriers when he got to film during a real game at St James' Park - Newcastle United's hallowed football ground.
"It was amazing," says Becker. "Being in this stadium with 52,000 people and filming a scene there was unbelievable, the stuff of your dreams.
"Football players are used to that buzz, that roar from the crowd - and that's why I think they cannot just leave the game, because of that feeling."
When Becker's character, Santiago, arrives in Britain, life isn't just about muddy pitches and crunching body blows. Faced with the temptations that accompany any success, Santiago flirts with the glamorous lifestyle that inevitably opens up for a well-paid player in the modern Premiership - and he also finds a more romantic flirtation with local hospital nurse Roz, played by Friel.
Becker won't divulge whether in real life he has a partner. In fact, the way he clams up at any query into his personal life, one suspects he's been burnt by the Latino paparazzi before now, and he's not about to tempt fate again as his fame begins to spread in Britain.
Get him on the subject of the real football stars who made cameos in Goal!, however, and his guard comes down - especially when it comes to one Real Madrid midfielder with the somewhat-similar name of Beckham. And indeed, in the second part of the trilogy, Santiago himself will join the Real Madrid team.
"Working with David Beckham was awesome," says Becker.
"Everyone knows him the world over, so can you imagine filming a scene with him?
"It was a scene in a nightclub, but I think the audience is going to get into it because we have a lot of famous, real players involved."
Goal! opens today...
