In the autumn of 1980, Granada TV sent a documentary crew to follow the fortunes of Manchester City, then struggling near the bottom of the old First Division, and their manager Malcolm Allison. At the time, Allison was one of football’s great outsized figures, a cigar-smoking, fedora-wearing rent-a-gob who also happened to be a visionary coach – albeit one whose reputation for motivating players was very much on the slide by the time Granada’s cameras arrived at Maine Road.
Aired in 1981, CITY! A Club in Crisis, is a sometimes toe-curling, entirely engrossing, all-access account of the end of Allison’s reign at the club. In the space of an hour of television, Allison watches his City side lose two crucial matches, is summarily sacked by oleaginous chairman Peter Swales, and then returns to the club for an FA Cup tie as manager of Crystal Palace, where the team are soundly beaten by his old charges. To make matters worse, his replacement at City is former teammate John Bond. In a post-match press conference, Bond issues a withering critique of Allison’s management style, all while Allison sits in silence a few seats away, cigar in gob, eyes fixed murderously on the middle-distance.
More than three decades on from the broadcast of A Club in Crisis comes All or Nothing, another behind-the-scenes account of life at Manchester City, although one that, name aside, seems to concern an entirely different club. Long gone are the mahogany-panelled boardrooms of Maine Road, replaced by the gleaming glass-fronted offices of City’s Etihad stadium and new academy complex. In the place of Swales, who made his money through a TV rentals company, the club is led by member of a Middle East oil dynasty, and – most strikingly of all – the shambling, “cups for cock-ups” City of the 80s, 90s and 00s has been usurped by the serial winners of the Pep Guardiola era.
All or Nothing, the latest instalment of an Amazon franchise that has so far profiled the All Blacks rugby union team as well as multiple NFL outfits, follows Guardiola’s side in the season where they amassed a record 100 points. Narrated by Ben Kingsley, it’s a glossy, behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of a side at their peak. Ahead of its launch, its creators trumpeted the “unprecedented access” they had received from the club, and it certainly wasn’t an idle boast, with the footage taking in treatment rooms, transfer negotiations and everything in between.
In truth, City have become the sort of outfit which should really run a mile from the all-access documentary. Because, historically, the medium has been one where reputations, rather than enhanced, are destroyed. Just ask John Sitton, former manager of Leyton Orient and subject of Channel 4’s 1995 doc Club for a Fiver. Ostensibly a film about the financial struggles of the-then second division side, it is now more famous for the volcanic outbursts delivered by Sitton to his beleaguered squad, one of which ends with him offering to have “a right sort-out” with two of his charges. Sitton’s managerial career never recovered, and his career has since taken in stints as a martial arts expert, football data expert and taxi driver.
Sitton’s is by no means the only legacy-shredding meltdown to have been captured for posterity by a no-doubt delighted camera crew. The England boss Graham “do I not like that” Taylor famously suffered the same indignity in Channel 4’s Cutting Edge doc An Impossible Job, a film that provided confirmation that dressing rooms are extremely sweary places: Taylor’s 38 uses of the word ”fuck” in the documentary was a record number for a British TV broadcast at the time.
Taylor’s impressive effort was bested three years later by Peterborough boss Barry Fry’s 48 uses of the expletive in Anglia’s There’s Only One Barry Fry. Peterborough and Fry would return to the screen just under a decade later in Sky One’s Big Ron Manager, which saw the disgraced coach and pundit attempt to rebuild his career by mentoring Posh manager Steve Bleasdale. Things didn’t quite go to plan: annoyed by Atkinson’s incessant input, Bleasdale quit two games from the end of the season.
For clubs on their uppers, such as Orient or Peterborough, which were reportedly paid £200,000 by Sky for the privilege of Big Ron’s presence, the promise of cash and the potential for exposure is worth the danger of embarrassment. That risk/reward is less enticing for clubs further up football’s food chain, which is perhaps why bigger clubs have historically been more cautious in allowing access to their inner sanctums, choosing instead to release their own controlled behind-the-scenes footage on inhouse TV networks such as MUTV, or club websites.
What seems to have changed things is the rise of US sports franchises such as HBO’s NFL series Hard Knocks and the earlier seasons of All or Nothing, both of which present a high-octane, access-all-areas form of documentary that – crucially – still seem to present the subject sport in a positive light. Such series, with their focus on narrative and personality rather than technical details, are also well-suited to international markets that might not be au fait with said sports.
In recent years, a similar model of documentary has been tentatively adopted in football, beginning with the 2012 series Being Liverpool, which followed the club’s progress over the course of a pre-season. That effort was slated for lacking decent access, although it did at least provide some eye-opening footage of manager Brendan Rodgers’ curious motivational methods, which included warning his squad that he had the names of three players who will “let us down this year” in a trio of envelopes. Then last year came Netflix’s First Team: Juventus, which offered higher stakes, taking place as it did across a full Serie A season, but still received criticism for lacking “moments of vulnerability”.
Certainly going by early previews All or Nothing is a sizeable upgrade on Being Liverpool and First Team. The series sets out its intentions at the start of its first episode, with footage of Guardiola delivering a manic team talk at half time of the League Cup final. Later in the same episode, the cameras are allowed to linger as the team’s left back Benjamin Mendy is told the extent of his ultimately season-ending cruciate ligament injury.
At times, as when midfielder David Silva discusses the premature birth of his son, or Sergio Agüero is filmed alone at home, a continent away from his young son, the series proves genuinely moving. Indeed, the access granted All or Nothing is sufficiently unprecedented to have reportedly angered Sky, which in all its years broadcasting the Premier League, has never been given the opportunity to film half-time team talks or bust-ups in the tunnel.
At the same time, City’s blanket promotion of All or Nothing on their various social media channels indicates that there’s nothing here that they’d prefer to keep buried. The club have said that they did not have editorial say on the final cut of the series, although were allowed to veto legally iffy or commercially sensitive scenes, and what is on show is less warts-and-all than charming imperfections. That’s understandable given that Amazon itself has a stake in the success of the Premier League and, by extension, its best club, with its rights to one of the league’s live broadcast packages beginning next season.
Still as different as this thoroughly modern documentary might seem to its grittier, grubbier predecessors, one thing remains pleasingly unchanged: the swearing. Before the opening credit sequence has rolled, Guardiola has managed three fucks and a middle finger. It’s not quite Fry and Taylor levels, but at least a grand old footballing tradition remains unchanged.
Four other great ‘all-access’ football documentaries
Six Days to Saturday (1963)
The week in the life of a scarily young Swindon Town team is the focus of this early all-access doc, one that features the amusing sight of the County Ground’s caretaker shooing pigeons from the stadium’s rafters with a rifle.
United (1990)
Not every great football documentary ends with failure: this six-part BBC series follows Harry Bassett’s Sheffield United as they battle their way back to the top flight for the first time in decades. Each episode follows a different aspect of the club: players, fans, wives, board, apprentices and the manager.
Premier Passions (1998)
Blackly comic five-parter about Sunderland’s 1997 relegation from the Premier League, which came just as they were constructing the gleaming new stadium that they hoped would cement their status among the elite. A new film, following Sunderland’s relegation to football’s third tier, is due later this year.
The Four Year Plan (2009)
Described by the Guardian’s Michael Hann as “the most vivid insight into the running of a football club committed to film”, this follows owners Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone’s “four-year plan” to get Queens Park Rangers into the top flight. They got there eventually, although not before sacking a staggering number of managers.
All or Nothing: Manchester City is available on Amazon
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