Is Will Ferrell the new Adam Sandler? Like Sandler, he's now a rock solid box-office proposition, and thus in a position to hog the screen in inane, formulaic, unfunny comedies like this.

Ferrell plays a mild-mannered vitamin salesman who's charged with coaching his son's underdog soccer team. Since his father (Robert Duvall) is coach of their overdog rivals, the job becomes a personal grudge match, fuelled by resentment, testosterone and caffeine, and destined to climax with the two teams meeting in the final.

But Ferrell's manic clowning rarely finds the net, and we're left with an increasingly uncomfortable display of flimsy jokes, appalling role modelling and criminal sporting ignorance: Ferrell persists in pronouncing Pele "Paylay", and celebrity cameo duty falls to the great, er, Mike Ditka, a hero of American football.