I really don't understand why they remade it. Surely it doesn't matter what sport it is, anyone being a diehard sports fan would be able to understand the obsession. I'm not even a huge soccer fan, and I thought the English version was better. No need for them to redo it.
"Look lady I don't come down to where you work and slap the d!ck out of your mouth".
As other posters have already said the original is very British-centric, there are many many references that the majority of a U.S. theatre audience would not understand, so much so that it didn't even get a U.S. general release. It was realeased at a single cinema in 1999 and grossed the princely sum of $3500.
By contrast the remade version featuring baseball and a cast more familiar to a U.S. audience grossed $42 MILLION.
So there's your answer, why do studios take successfull "foreign" films and remake them for an American audience? Because it's like printing money and the movie business is, after all, a business.
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