‘A WINNING TEAM’: SOCCER STAR SPARKS NEW ROMANCE WITH COACH
Mixing sports with romance is a rarity for Hallmark, but A Winning Team helps its heroine reinvent herself and recapture her career, too.
A Winning Team (2022) Hallmark Review
Having her career taken from her isn’t something Emily (Nadia Hatta) has on her life plan. But she has an attitude and is fiercely loyal to her teammates. Despite her impressive scoring record, her coach suspends Emily as a player. Her brother convinces her to take this time to come visit him and his daughter, despite Emily’s protests. She winds up visiting where she has a new challenge to face.
While there, she accidentally derails her niece’s soccer season which means against her better judgement she ends up coaching the team. This sets into motion an annoying back and forth between Emily and Ian (Kristoffer Polaha), a coach who happens to be the extreme of laid back to Emily’s ridged play to win mindset.
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‘A WINNING TEAM’: SOCCER STAR SPARKS NEW ROMANCE WITH COACH. #KristofferPolaha stars in #AWinningTeam, a Hallmark film. #Hallmark Share on X
A Winning Team is, like so many others, a film that’s all about two characters who banter and seemingly detest each other. Of course, it’s all in a playfully fun way. It fits about forty or so minutes in (as its prone to do) before they find their footing and realize they both had positive things to offer to the soccer game and coaching. Whether you like the hate to love romance or not, the characters banter is all in fun and I quite enjoy them together.
Apart from the sports angle, which isn’t something Hallmark does a lot, this one has a fresh angle because it casts a new (for them) leading lady with a very familiar leading man. They’re both good and despite not having a lot of credits to her name, I really like Hatta in the role. Cute and entertaining, as always, A Winning Team is easy watching and super fun because its backing (sports) isn’t something we see frequently on the network. It still plays into the small-town tropes and such, but I think the unique aspects allow this one to stand out.
Stream, at publication, on Hallmark+
Photos: Hallmark Media
Content: there is nothing of note in this typically TV-G Hallmark film.
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