This year, it has been Tottenham Hotspur’s turn in the All or Nothing lens. The Amazon
cameras followed the club through their 2019-20 season, culminating in a nine-part series
which has recently come to a conclusion.
Fly-on-the-wall documentaries are nothing new. Not even in football, despite its paranoid
secrecy. An Impossible Job, the account of Graham Taylor’s doomed management of the
English national team, remains in heavy reference. As does John Sitton’s notorious performance
in Orient, Club for a Fiver, as do many high- and lowlights from all sorts of other series
too.
So, the voyeuristic allure has existed for a while and remains as strong as ever. Gradually,
though, with football’s aims diversifying, clubs’ willingness to pull the curtain back
on themselves has grown.
No longer a risk taken out of necessity or naivety. Now – if handled correctly and
with the right balance between revelation and vanity – it can provide a great opportunity.
One that, in time, clubs will almost certainly try to grasp each and every year.
Tottenham have opened their doors before. During the 1971-72 season, Hunter Davies embedded
himself with Bill Nicholson’s UEFA Cup-winning side, the result of which was The Glory Game,
a no-holds barred first-person account.
Davies was granted full access. To the players, to the manager. Inside the dressing-room and
out. While his marvellous book described the inner mechanics of a season which ended in
success, it also contained plenty of team politics and the sort of insecurities and
isms that footballers and their employers have preferred to keep private ever since.
On reflection, the problem was totality of access and a lack of control. Readers became
invested in the fate of the team and its players and that was a good thing. But the cost of
their fascination was the kind of detail that wasn’t supposed to be shared. And that wasn’t
good.
Football’s response was to recoil; it spent much of the next almost fifty years searching
for a ‘tell all’ formula which told a little less and did a little more for them
– which satisfied commercial imperatives without breaching its strangely Masonic code.
And today it has that formula, with its limited, but somehow satisfying access, and its feel-good,
all-in-this-together tone.
Allowing television cameras exclusive behind-the-scenes access is lucrative. In 2018-19, Amazon paid
Manchester City a reported £10m for the privilege. A year later, the deal struck by Daniel Levy
was apparently very similar – and, according to reports, will lead to the launch of a first-of-its-kind
retail partnership with Amazon.
But an equally, probably more valuable commodity lies in controlling the message. In defining
the conversation that exists around a football club and those it employs. Like its many predecessors,
this Tottenham series has shown both that process in action and also demonstrated what
a powerful utility these documentaries are.
Head coach Jose Mourinho is divisive and occasionally fatalistic and yet, throughout the series,
he’s presented as a figure of great optimism. Barring one uncomfortable exchange with Danny
Rose, he duels manfully with injuries, endless bad luck, and – in effect – a situation
beyond his control.
It’s not a character those familiar with his work will recognise.
The footage of his coaching and preparatory sessions is light on technical jargon and
rich on the sort of persuasive, emotional rhetoric that supporters can both relate to
and buy into. Reasonably so, because dense footballspeak rarely makes for entertainment,
but the effect is the synthetic theatre of Made in Chelsea, The Only Way Is Essex, or
Jersey Shore.
It’s not inaccurate, but then neither does the camera ever find an unflattering angle.
Of the manager, of the players, or even of the club itself.
In the past, for instance, Tottenham have been heavily criticised for their activity
in the transfer market. It’s likely not a coincidence, therefore, that Daniel Levy
and Steve Hitchen, the head of recruitment, discuss – in separate interviews to camera
and more than once - just how difficult it is to make a signing and how complicated that
process is.
It’s not surprising either that the season-long Tanguy Ndombele saga is condensed into a single
late episode or that the club’s attempt to use the government’s job protection scheme,
and their u-turn in response to subsequent public outrage, has been left out altogether.
It’s not so much a false reality, more just the club’s version of the truth – an approved
message, even. Perhaps it’s also the future and the natural step beyond in-house television
channels and preferred media partners? Clubs and their supporters are, at their most entwined,
churches and congregations and it seems logical that there should be a choir and a sermon.
In decades past, a season review would be just released at the end of the year on a
stuttering VHS, Today, clubs are too sensitive to be judged on results alone and worth too
much as a brand to be damaged by the peaks and troughs of a sport, or the disparity between
the goal columns.
They may not be able to alleviate those inconveniences entirely, but having a yearly right to reply
would be a start.
A place to over-emphasise the good, hurry over the bad. To dwell on the wins, fast-forward
the losses. And to show a player doing charity work, rather than two-footing an opponent.
Soon, All or Nothing will be everyone’s, each and every year.