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Matthew McConaughey to Play a Very Matthew McConaughey Role

Matthew McConaughey. Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images for HISTORY

Ballright ballright ballright! Matthew McConaughey is set to play a wise and tough but fair underdog sports coach in a period piece set in the American South for the first time since 2006’s We Are Marshall. The movie, Dallas Sting, is based on the true story of the American 19-and-under youth soccer team that competed in the first FIFA-sanctioned world women’s tournament in 1984 and (spoiler alert) won, beating professional national teams from China, Australia, and Italy. McConaughey will play head coach Bill Kinder, and according to Deadline, filming is set to begin in New Orleans this fall, directed by Kari Skogland and with a script written by GLOW alums Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch. “In order to form the team nearly 40 years ago,” according to Deadline, “Kinder had to get a note from a gynecologist asserting that playing soccer would not harm a woman’s reproductive organs.” With details like that, you can see why this film would be put into production now. Everything about it is timely: the sexism faced by U.S. Women’s National Soccer players, the policing of women’s reproductive systems and freedoms in Texas, and, of course, the post-Yellowjackets coolness of teen-girl soccer. I mean, they’re even called the Sting. It’s giving buzz buzz.

Matthew McConaughey to Play a Very Matthew McConaughey Role