Trivia / Mike Bassett: England Manager

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The scene where Mike delivers a Cluster F-Bomb of epic proportions at half-time during the England-Mexico match is sometimes remembered as ending with the referee sticking his head into the dressing room and saying "Come on, time for the second half, you bunch of fucking English cunts" or something similar. In reality, that didn't occur in England Manager (or Manager), but rather the 1999 TV movie Bostock's Cup, which features a very similar scene of the titular team's manager delivering an extremely profane rant during a half-time talk.
• Deleted Scene: Mike visiting Phil Cope in hospital - hence the credit for Malcolm Terris.
• Fake Irish: The Ireland team is made up of Brazilians, save for the one with a speaking part.
• Life Imitates Art:
  • In the film, England beat Argentina 1-0 in the group stage. This would happen in reality during the actual 2002 World Cup.
  • The film also sees Brazil winning the World Cup. Like the above example, this also happened in 2002.
• The Other Darrin: Bradley Walsh and Dean Lennox Kelly played Doddsy and Tonka in the film; they were replaced by Steve Edge and Renton Skinner respectively for the TV series. The unmade Interim Manager would have had Walsh returning to the role, reversing this trope.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Natasha Hamilton of Atomic Kitten does not appear in the film because she had a ruptured appendix at the time. Her vocals were supplied by a pre-fame Lily Allen.
• Throw It In!: The filmmakers managed to find a few Scots on holiday at the Rio airport, and got them to play the Scottish team on camera.
• Typecasting: Most of the England players also played footballers on the show Dream Team.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film was originally supposed to end with Mike quitting the England job despite his eventual success, and moving to Bolivia to coach there. The producers decided they wanted a Sequel Hook however, and refilmed the ending to have Mike proclaiming "four more years!" (In the TV series we find out that he lasted just over one year, getting sacked after losing every single match in the Euro 2004 qualifying tournament)
  • The planned theatrical sequel, Mike Bassett: Interim Manager would have had a German coach named Jorgen Mannstein take over the England side, bringing on Mike as an assistant due to the language and cultural barriers. However, Mannstein then left to take over as Germany national coach after their existing boss was fired due to a scandal involving crystal meth — a reference to a real-life scandal involving Christoph Daum, who was set to take over as Germany national coach right about the time the first film came out, but had the job offer withdrawn after he was caught using cocaine — leaving Mike to take over as England manager for the tournament. Following the failure of a Kickstarter campaign and the absence of any news in the years since, however, it seems unlikely the film will ever be made.

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