"The Damned United" and AITA?

[Spoilers ahead, but the movie has been out for more than ten years, so yeah.]

Flying back from Costa Rica, I had a seven hour flight from Miami to Seattle. 

It was a long flight. 

Since it is World Cup season, the airline had a bunch of soccer movies, including Fever Pitch starring Colin Firth and Bend It Like Beckham. (As much as I love Colin Firth and Nick Hornby, I couldn't get into Fever Pitch.) After Bend It Like Beckham, I watched The Damned United starring Michael Sheen about the soccer manager Brian Clough, considered the greatest manager in England. It was crazy good, probably one of the top ten movies I've ever seen. I don't know how true the movie is, but it is a good story of a guy before he became a legend.

Brian and assistant manager take an obscure, last place team and raise it to the top of the field. Along the way, Brian gets ignored by the legendary coach Don Revie of the Leeds United, the best team in the England football league in the 1960's and 1970's. When Revie is asked to lead England's national team, Brain is asked to coach Leeds United. He thinks Revie was a dirty coach, and he vows to clean up Leeds, so they can win but win honestly without cheating. As Brian's success grows, he becomes more confident, cocky and arrogant. You know the expression you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar? Brian didn't. He ultimately gets fired after forty-four days as coach of Leeds.

There is a scene at the end where Don Revie and Brian Clough are interviewed on television together after Brian has been sacked. It is a tense interview where Don asks Brian if he treated the members of the Leeds team like family, was he kind? Brian looks perplexed, dumbfounded, but was the interview goes on, seems to realize the answer to the question "Am I the asshole?" is yes. Brian is being called out by his nemesis for his miserable behavior.

Brian got the point, and groveled back to his assistant manager to work with him again, going on to become a successful and beloved coach. Revie's career ended in scandal.

So often the point of movies is watching people change, grow and develop into better human beings. So often, the protagonist has a eureka moment, the lightening strikes and voila! the person is changed, enlightened. This rarely happens in life.

Both men were called out by each other, but one of them took it to heart, and the other did not. Everyone at some point of their life is a jerk, a schmuck, an asshole. The question is what do we do with that information? Do we say, yeah, I know, but so what? I was born this way. I can't change.

Or, can we face our weaknesses, admit we were at fault, and then try to be better. The failure of Brian wasn't getting fired after forty-four days at Leeds. The failure would have been if he learned nothing from the experience.