For a Hollywood film, the release date could be almost as important as the film itself.
DreamWorks and Disney had understood that from the beginning.
Long before Goal! entered post-production, both studios studied the summer calendar carefully and eventually settled on July 15.
The date kept the film away from Fantastic Four and, more importantly, gave it breathing room before Michael Bay's The Island entered cinemas.
There were still formidable competitors.
Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, starring Johnny Depp, opened on the same weekend.
So did the R-rated comedy Wedding Crashers.
All three films wanted exactly the same thing.
A dominant opening weekend.
Most industry forecasts expected Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to finish first.
That prediction was hardly unreasonable.
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp were an established combination, and Warner Bros. launched the film in 3,770 cinemas across North America.
It opened with an excellent $55.38 million.
Wedding Crashers performed better than many analysts expected as well, taking $32.25 million despite mixed discussion surrounding its premise.
Ordinarily, that would have been enough for second place.
Instead, it finished third.
Goal! had opened with $58.72 million.
The football film was number one at the North American box office.
Hollywood took notice immediately.
This was no modest success built around a niche sporting audience.
Goal! had opened more strongly than several of the summer's most heavily promoted films, including Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Batman Begins and Madagascar.
For a film centred on a sport still considered secondary in the United States, the result was extraordinary.
In hindsight, there had been warning signs.
New Manchester United, Real Madrid and AC Milan were all touring the United States.
The Audi-sponsored summer tournament had received enormous publicity.
The American football audience was more engaged than ever.
And after the Hollywood premiere, early reviews of Goal! had been far stronger than expected.
A successful opening was plausible.
What nobody predicted was that it would win the weekend.
The second weekend made the story even bigger.
Michael Bay's The Island finally opened.
It had an enormous budget, an aggressive marketing campaign and more than three thousand screens.
The result was disastrous.
The film earned only around $12.1 million over the weekend and entered the chart in fifth place.
Goal! remained at number one.
More remarkably, its drop from opening weekend was only around twenty per cent.
It earned another $47.01 million.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory followed with approximately $28.3 million.
Wedding Crashers brought in around $26.2 million.
After less than two weeks in cinemas, Goal!'s cumulative North American gross had already pushed beyond $100 million and was moving rapidly towards $140 million.
The original internal target had been to cross $100 million during the film's entire theatrical run.
That target was already obsolete.
The reviews remained strong too.
Audiences were not merely watching the film because they liked football.
Many were recommending it to people who did not.
The story of an outsider fighting his way into professional football proved easy to understand.
So did the themes surrounding New Manchester United.
Community.
Ambition.
Loyalty.
Money.
Belonging.
The question of whether a football club existed only to win or whether it represented something larger.
Those ideas gave the film more weight than a conventional sports drama.
DreamWorks and Disney responded immediately.
Advertising increased.
More interviews were scheduled.
Television appearances multiplied.
The studios began publicly discussing a North American total of $300 million.
A month earlier, that would have sounded absurd.
After The Island collapsed and the late-summer calendar opened up, it suddenly seemed possible.
The third weekend strengthened the argument.
Goal! declined by around thirty per cent and still collected another $32.84 million.
For the third consecutive week, it remained number one.
Wedding Crashers climbed into second place with $20.47 million.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory slipped to third with $16.38 million.
By then, the entertainment press had settled on a phrase.
The summer's biggest dark horse.
Nobody had expected a football film to become one of the year's biggest releases.
After three weeks, its cumulative North American gross was approaching the $200 million mark.
The fourth weekend finally brought a substantial decline.
Goal! fell by roughly fifty per cent and earned around $17.13 million.
It lost the top position to Stealth, which opened at approximately $30.57 million.
Even then, the story remained extraordinary.
Goal!'s cumulative North American total was approaching $240 million.
It had already passed War of the Worlds in the year's box-office rankings and, for the moment, sat behind only Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith.
Attention immediately shifted towards the winter releases.
Could Harry Potter challenge it?
Could The Chronicles of Narnia?
Those films were expected to perform extremely well.
The fact that Goal! was even being discussed in the same conversation demonstrated how far expectations had changed.
The international market was even stronger.
Europe embraced the film immediately.
So did South America.
Football supporters who already knew the players and understood the sport reacted differently from American audiences, but the enthusiasm was no less intense.
The film eventually accumulated roughly $370 million outside North America.
Its worldwide total passed $600 million.
Star Wars remained ahead.
That hardly mattered.
Goal! was a sports film.
Sports films rarely produced global numbers like this.
The commercial consequences for New Manchester United were enormous.
The film became something no conventional advertising campaign could have created.
A two-hour introduction to the club.
People who had never watched the Premier League now knew the Red Rebels.
They knew Newton Heath.
They recognised the shirts.
They recognised the stadium.
They knew the club's rivalry with Manchester United.
They knew the story of the lower-league rise, even if Hollywood had reshaped parts of it for dramatic effect.
Commercial analysts began revising New Manchester United's brand value almost weekly.
Some now regarded them as the most marketable football club in the world.
Club membership applications rose sharply.
Demand for shirts increased again.
Ticket enquiries increased.
The waiting list for season tickets grew longer.
Even supporters who could never attend a match began purchasing official merchandise or subscribing to club content.
The film had become the most effective calling card New Manchester United had ever possessed.
That immediately increased expectations for the sequel.
The second Goal! film had already completed principal photography and entered post-production.
DreamWorks and Disney were pleased with what they had seen, but nobody assumed the sequel would automatically reproduce the first film's extraordinary performance.
The original possessed an advantage that could never be repeated.
Discovery.
Audiences had entered with almost no expectations and encountered the rise of a football club whose history sounded fictional even though much of it had really happened.
The climb through English football gave the story emotional weight.
The club's philosophy gave it something to say beyond the matches themselves.
A sequel could not simply repeat that.
Eventually the films had to become more about football, fame and the lives of the characters.
That naturally pushed the series closer to conventional commercial entertainment.
The studios therefore expected the second film to depend more heavily on spectacle.
Fortunately, they had another enormous opportunity.
The 2006 World Cup.
If the sequel could be positioned around the global attention created by the tournament, the marketing potential would be extraordinary.
Matching the first film's critical response might be impossible.
Matching its box office no longer seemed absurd.
Goal!'s success also created an unexpected side effect for Ethan and Eva.
Ethan had received a screenplay credit for helping shape the film's story and football material.
The attention around the movie suddenly made people curious about other projects connected to him.
Eva had quietly begun preparing her own films.
She had wanted to direct for years but had never found the right project.
Ethan eventually gave her two stories he remembered from his previous life and helped reshape them for a Western setting.
The first was Rule Number One.
The second was Mad Detective.
Rule Number One moved forward first.
Eva would direct.
Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck were attached to star.
The basic concept remained a supernatural thriller, although Ethan and Eva reworked the characters, setting and dialogue extensively to make the story feel natural in an American production.
The ending remained the element that attracted the most attention internally.
Nearly everyone who read the screenplay praised its final reversal.
Filming was close to completion.
Post-production would begin shortly afterwards.
A first teaser had already been released, and the studio planned to open the film during the second half of the following year.
It would be Eva's directorial debut.
For Ethan, it was also the first project outside football for which he had taken a substantial screenplay credit.
He felt slightly uncomfortable about that.
The story had originated in another life.
He had altered it, localised it and helped rebuild it for a completely different production, but he still knew where the original inspiration had come from.
Mad Detective was further away.
The basic screenplay existed, but Ethan had not yet found enough time to refine it with Eva.
Neither was in a hurry.
It was a project designed specifically around the type of film she wanted to make.
They would rather delay it than rush it.
After Goal!, however, entertainment journalists suddenly paid attention to both projects.
Ethan and Eva's creative partnership became a story of its own.
Football had made him famous.
Goal! had connected him with Hollywood.
Now people wanted to know whether the success could extend beyond New Manchester United.
While the entertainment world obsessed over box-office figures, Mourinho was considerably more interested in training.
Goal!'s success had inevitably created distractions around the squad.
Reporters followed the players everywhere.
American television wanted interviews.
Sponsors wanted appearances.
Fans gathered outside hotels.
The most chaotic event was probably the charity match in Los Angeles.
New Manchester United had invited figures from entertainment and American sport to participate.
Hollywood stars appeared.
NBA players arrived.
Kobe Bryant took part.
Steve Nash joined.
Kevin Garnett was involved.
Dirk Nowitzki appeared.
Several NFL players accepted invitations as well.
Many had played football recreationally at some point in their lives and were delighted by the opportunity.
The biggest surprise was Michael Jordan.
Jordan had always spoken warmly about football and had admitted to admiring Raúl, but he was also fascinated by New Manchester United's rise.
When invited, he agreed to play.
That alone transformed the event.
Nobody expected the celebrities to compete seriously with professional footballers.
That was not the purpose.
The New Manchester United players deliberately reduced the intensity.
The celebrities took risks they would never have attempted in a competitive match.
Jordan even tried an overhead kick.
He did not score.
The stadium loved it anyway.
More than fifty thousand people attended the event.
Television rights and sponsors increased the revenue further.
After expenses, approximately $2 million was donated to charity.
That mattered more than the score.
Kobe Bryant was one of the most enthusiastic participants afterwards.
Basketball was obviously his profession, but he had played enough football growing up to understand the game.
He spoke particularly highly of Kaká.
To Bryant, the Brazilian's ability to accelerate through midfield made him almost impossible to contain once he found space.
He also praised Ronaldo and Messi, describing both as extraordinary talents.
The players enjoyed the evening.
Mourinho tolerated it because the event had been carefully placed within the training schedule and because the performance staff controlled how much work the squad actually did.
Nobody cared who had won.
The money raised was the result that mattered.
New Manchester United remained in Los Angeles for several more days afterwards.
One by one, the players returning from the World Youth Championship began joining the squad.
Messi arrived.
Fàbregas arrived.
Agüero, Mikel, Ishmael and Michael Johnson followed.
Their additional rest had ended.
Now Mourinho finally had almost the entire senior group available.
Training intensity rose immediately.
Once the Los Angeles phase ended, the squad flew east.
New York was the next stop.
After three days of training, New Manchester United played the MetroStars.
The MLS side had been selected partly because of AEG's involvement in both the club and the wider American tour.
Mourinho used the match to increase the minutes given to his senior players.
The difference from the LA Galaxy friendly was obvious.
New Manchester United were sharper.
The passing moved more quickly.
The pressing was better coordinated.
The attacking players were beginning to find each other's rhythm again.
They won 4-1.
Mourinho barely mentioned the score afterwards.
For him, the Galaxy and MetroStars matches had always been preparation.
Useful preparation, certainly.
But still preparation.
The real tests were coming next.
AC Milan arrived in New York the following day.
Real Madrid followed.
The United States national-team squad was confirmed as the fourth participant.
New Manchester United.
AC Milan.
Real Madrid.
United States.
Four teams.
One summer tournament.
The Audi Cup would provide Mourinho with exactly what he wanted before the Premier League season began.
Strong opposition.
Meaningful intensity.
Different tactical problems.
By then, the promotional appearances would be largely finished.
The charity events would be behind them.
The film premiere was over.
The commercial department had enjoyed its summer.
Now Mourinho wanted his football team back.
The new season was finally beginning to feel real.
(To be continued.)