| Director | Atlee |
|---|---|
| Genre | association football film |
| Country | India |
| Budget | ₹180 crore |
| Box office | ₹285 crore |
Michael is a gangster from Royapuram, Chennai who works to help his slum. He has a comical relationship with his girlfriend, Angel Aasirvatham, and a running feud with Daniel, a rival gangster. One night, Daniel attacks Michael and his close friend Kathir, who is the coach of the Tamil Nadu women's football team. Kathir is injured during the attack and becomes paralysed for a year. The team blamed Michael for his condition and ousted him. To allow the team to take part in the upcoming national championship in Delhi, Kathir requests the Tamil Nadu Football Association to replace him with his former teammate Bigil, who is actually Michael.
Seven years earlier, Michael was an aspiring footballer who, along with Kathir, played an important role in the Tamil Nadu football team's success. His father, Rayappan, is a crime boss who feuded with Daniel's father, Alex. Rayappan encourages Michael's passion for football, as he does not want him to end up in a life of crime. When Michael was unable to play for the Indian national team due to Rayappan's criminal record, Rayappan personally took up the matter with AIFF president J.K. Sharma and forcefully ensured that he included Michael and Kathir in the team's preliminary squad. However, Michael's career gets cut short just when he is about to leave for Delhi to attend the national team trials, Rayappan was stabbed to death by Alex and Daniel. Michael kills Alex in front of Daniel and stays in Chennai to become the new leader of Rayappan's gang. Michael's absence caused the team to lose in the trials, which sent them back home. Kathir met Michael, who asked him to organise a women's football team, and they worked together to select women who were struggling and poor, giving them everything.
Back to the present, Michael confronts Daniel and attempts to kill him for the earlier attack, but the police intervene to arrest Daniel and imprison him. Michael later accepts Kathir's request to coach the Tamil Nadu women's team, and he returns to football before leaving for Delhi with Angel and the team. However, due to his criminal background, the women refuse to cooperate with him and even blame him for the team's opening loss to Manipur in the national championship. Dejected, Michael reaches out to Sharma to resign, but soon discovers that Sharma is targeting him in revenge for the humiliation that he had faced at the hands of Rayappan to allow him into the national team and was the one who sent armed assailants to attack Michael before the match.
However, Michael convinces the women to support him and trains them vigorously to win the championship. He even manages to bring back two former key players to boost the team's strength: Gayathri, a Brahmin girl who quit football after marrying into a conservative family, and Anitha, who is in depression and refuses to even leave her room ever since a man threw acid on her when she spurned his advances. Angel motivates a pregnant Gayathri to continue playing football. Despite Sharma trying to rig Tamil Nadu's next match against Haryana to eliminate them, they won the match and all of the matches after that, eventually reaching the final, a rematch with Manipur in Chennai.
On the eve of the final, Vembu is kidnapped and forcefully injected with cocaine by Daniel, who is bailed out of prison and hired by Sharma to sabotage Tamil Nadu's chances of winning the championship. Though she recovered, she was unable to play in the final as she would fail the drug test. The team's captain, Thendral, is also kidnapped by Daniel, who attempts to forcefully inject cocaine into her as well; Michael also gets kidnapped by Daniel and is injected with cocaine. Michael manages to beat Daniel's men, chases Daniel to his house, and proceeds to kill him, but when he sees Daniel's young son, he changes his mind and spares Daniel, as he realises he does not want the young boy's future to become like his by killing Daniel.
The next day, Tamil Nadu plays Manipur in the final. The match turned out to be a thriller, with Tamil Nadu winning the championship through a penalty shoot-out. Michael and the team dedicate their success to Kathir, who was watching the match from the dugout in a wheelchair. Michael later exposed Sharma for drug possession, leading to his arrest and subsequent execution when he was on holiday in Malaysia. A few months later, Michael quits rowdyism and takes up football coaching for children, with one of his students being Daniel's son, who has now made peace with Michael.