DALLAS — You can take McConaughey out of Texas, but you can never take the Texas out of McConaughey.
The Uvalde-born actor is slated to star in the upcoming film "Dallas Sting," Deadline reported Friday. Based on a true story, the movie will follow the teenage female athletes who made history in 1984 when they became the first American soccer team, male or female, to win a major international tournament.
Kari Skogland ("The Falcon and the Winter Soldier") will direct the drama from a script by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch ("Roar"). McConaughey will star as coach Bill Kinder, the Oklahoma native who fought to bring the 19-and-under Richardson-based team to China to represent the U.S. in the first FIFA-sanctioned world women’s tournament. There, the underdog group of Texans walked away victorious, beating out teams from Italy and Australia in a major upset.
The film is set to start production this fall in New Orleans, Deadline reported.
“The story shows how women have been and still are treated poorly around the world in sports compared to their male counterparts,” said producer Sarah Schechter in 2020. “To see what The Sting did with little support and no money, intertwined with how these very different young girls meshed for the love of the sport and country, is something beautiful that deserves not to be lost to history.”
Kinder had never coached soccer before forming The Sting in 1973 — how very "Ted Lasso" of him — during a time when female athletics were not widely accepted. The name “Sting” came from a Paul Newman and Robert Redford film that had premiered that year about the dealings of a group of con-men.
“At that time, girls sports really in a way were verboten,” Kinder told The Dallas Morning News in 2015. “For the most part, people just didn’t think girls should be doing athletics at all.”
Meanwhile, the Sting Soccer Organization is still alive and well, and former Sting players reunited in 2015, just before the United States Women’s Soccer team clinched a record third World Cup title on their way to a fourth.
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