Carlos Therón’s The Champion (El campeón), a Spanish remake of Italy’s Il campione, casts the rapper Swit Eme as a volatile Atlético de Madrid prodigy and Dani Rovira as the psychology professor hired to rein him in.

The Champion (El campeón) is a 2024 Spanish sports comedy-drama made for Netflix, directed by Carlos Therón from a screenplay by Joaquín Oristrell and Joan Gual. The rapper Marcel Serrano, known as Swit Eme, plays Diego, a 20-year-old Atlético de Madrid striker, opposite Dani Rovira as Álex, the psychology professor hired to bring him back into line. The film premiered worldwide on Netflix on Friday 12 July 2024 and runs 106 minutes.

Its premise is spelled out in the official synopsis. Diego has just been named the best young player in Europe and, at 20, is on course to win La Liga for his club. But his impulsive, combative character has worn out everyone around him, and after a violent clash during a match leaves him on the bench, the club, tired of his excesses, hires Álex, a withdrawn and solitary psychology professor, to improve his conduct. Neither of them has any choice but to learn to understand the other.

What the film is about

The two men could hardly be further apart. Diego’s life is organised around his talent and its market value, and the release-week coverage pointed to the film’s interest in a modern footballer’s exposure on social media and what it does to his game. Álex, according to the coverage published around the release, is a university teacher with personal and financial problems of his own, which is part of why he accepts such an unusual job in the first place. The story is built on that exchange: the footballer has to listen, and the professor has to step out of his own isolation.

Around them sits a small circle with its own interests. Pablo Chiapella plays Tito, Diego’s father, for whom his son’s career and the money it can generate come first, and who sees Álex’s arrival as a threat. Luis Fernández plays Juanma, who becomes the father’s accomplice in a plan for Diego’s future that the player knows nothing about. Cintia García plays Ceci, Carlos Librado “Nene” plays Héctor and Pere Brasó plays Delgado. Beyond that, the plot is better left to the film, and nothing here goes further than what Netflix and the release-week coverage made public.

An Italian story moved to Madrid

The Champion is a remake. Its source is Il campione (2019), the first feature by the Italian director Leonardo D’Agostini, who wrote it with Antonella Lattanzi and Giulia Steigerwalt. In the original, Andrea Carpenzano played Christian Ferro, a gifted and undisciplined AS Roma striker, and Stefano Accorsi played Valerio Fioretti, the reserved teacher the club hires to help him finish his school-leaving exams. D’Agostini has said the idea came from Mario Balotelli’s turbulent years at AC Milan and the club’s decision to pair him with a tutor.

The Italian film was recognised at home. It was produced by Matteo Rovere and Sydney Sibilia through Groenlandia with Rai Cinema, won two Nastri d’Argento in 2019, for best new director and best producer, and earned D’Agostini and Accorsi nominations at the 2020 David di Donatello awards. The Spanish version keeps the core pairing of a young star and a reluctant mentor, but swaps AS Roma for Atlético de Madrid and the school exams for a professor hired to correct the player’s behaviour.

The team behind it

Carlos Therón, born in Salamanca in 1978, is one of the most commercially reliable comedy directors in Spain. He made his feature debut with Fuga de cerebros 2 (2011), and his Es por tu bien (2017), with close to 1.6 million admissions, was the most successful Spanish film of the first half of that year. Lo dejo cuando quiera (2019) and Operación Camarón (2021) followed, along with Fenómenas for Netflix and episodes of television series such as Los hombres de Paco, El barco and Mira lo que has hecho. The Champion is his second film for the platform, and a move towards drama for a director whose best-known features are comedies.

Joaquín Oristrell brings decades of experience to the script. He began as a writer on the television game show Un, dos, tres, won the Goya for best original screenplay for Todos los hombres sois iguales, wrote comedies such as ¿Por qué lo llaman amor cuando quieren decir sexo? and Boca a boca, directed Sin vergüenza and Dieta mediterránea, and created the television series HIT. In 2026 he won a second Goya, for best adapted screenplay, for La cena. He wrote The Champion with Joan Gual.

Fernando Bovaira produced the film for MOD Producciones, with Simón de Santiago and Urko Errazquin as executive producers. Imanol Nabea was the director of photography, Carolina Martínez Urbina edited it and Vicente Ortiz Gimeno composed the score. Shooting took place in Segovia and Madrid, including the Cívitas Metropolitano, Atlético’s stadium, and the club’s name, colours and references run through the film to an extent rarely seen in Spanish fiction since Real Madrid lent its image to Goal II: Living the Dream (2007). In Spanish cinema, the reference point for the sports comedy-drama remains Javier Fesser’s Campeones (2018), about a basketball coach sentenced to train a team of players with intellectual disabilities, which won the Goya for best film.

A rapper, a comedian and Amador

For Swit Eme, The Champion is a step from music into acting. Marcel Serrano had built his name as a hip-hop artist and had only appeared briefly in the Netflix series Fanático before taking this lead role, his big-screen debut. Dani Rovira is the established star of the pair: a former stand-up comedian, he won the Goya for best new actor for Ocho apellidos vascos (2014), one of the biggest Spanish box-office hits ever, and has since appeared in its sequel Ocho apellidos catalanes and in Disney’s Jungle Cruise (2021).

The summer of 2024 was a busy one for Dani Rovira. Within weeks he appeared in El bus de la vida, as a music teacher diagnosed with cancer, in The Champion, and in the comedy Cuerpo escombro, released in cinemas in August. Two of those three roles were dramatic, part of a broader shift away from the purely comic register that made him famous.

The supporting cast leans on familiar television faces. Pablo Chiapella has played Amador Rivas in La que se avecina since 2007 and came up through the cult comedy group behind La hora chanante. Luis Fernández became known as Culebra in Los protegidos. Carlos Librado “Nene” is himself a former footballer who played in the lower divisions of Spanish football before acting in films such as El guardián invisible.

How it did on Netflix

The release landed in the middle of Euro 2024: Netflix put the film out two days before Spain beat England in the final in Berlin. The Champion entered Netflix’s global Top 10 for non-English films in its first three days, at number nine with 2 million views, and climbed to number four the following week, with 2.8 million views and 5 million hours watched.

In Spain it went further, reaching number one among films in its second week after debuting at number three, and staying in the national chart for three weeks. It also entered the Top 10 in Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela and Paraguay, and briefly in Morocco and Panama. Those weekly charts are the only audience figures Netflix has made public for the film.

Our take

On paper, The Champion is a familiar sports-film frame, the gifted rebel and the reluctant mentor, transplanted from Rome to Madrid and built around a real club rather than a fictional one. Its interest lies less in whether Diego will score than in what the people around him want from him: a father focused on money, a club focused on the title, and a stranger hired to care. The open way the story ends drew most of the attention at release, and each viewer will decide whether that choice works for them.

What draws attention is the mix of ingredients: a director known for broad comedy trying a more serious register, a veteran Goya-winning writer adapting an award-winning Italian film, a rapper making his acting debut and a comedian moving into drama. With Atlético de Madrid at the centre of its story and a release timed to the Euro, it is a contained 106-minute proposition aimed squarely at football fans and family audiences.