attended the world premiere of a major fly-on-the-wall documentary series on Manchester City
Obviously it couldn’t be a red carpet. When Amazon Prime Video launched their new documentary series on
Manchester City FC in the Premier League club’s home town on Wednesday night, they literally rolled out a blue carpet for an audience that included many of the players who feature in the show.
All Or Nothing: Manchester City — the latest in an Amazon series that had previously featured several US sports teams and the All Blacks — offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Premier League club’s march to the title in the 2017-18 season.
Crucial moments from games against the likes of Liverpool and Chelsea are shown, but it’s the off-the-field stuff that’s most interesting here.
From rousing dressing-room speeches by manager Pep Guardiola, to training ground banter and medical examinations of injured players, we get a glimpse inside the footballers’ lives during the vast majority of the time they’re not on the pitch.
Before the first episode of the eight-part series was premiered at the Printworks in Manchester, team captain Vincent Kompany was on stage with Gabby Logan admitting he felt a mite nervous about what was going to be revealed in the show.
“It’s pretty nerve-wracking,” he said. “You don’t know what they’re going to show. They were there everywhere, all the time — and whatever came out, came out.”
Kompany needn’t have worried. There is footage of players in situations and moods we wouldn’t usually see, but one of the main achievements of this series is to remind us that these multi-millionaire celebrity ball-kickers are also human beings.
Take mercurial midfielder Kevin de Bruyne. He had hobbled down that blue carpet on crutches for the premiere — the result of a knee injury in training earlier that day — and comes across in the documentary as a softly-spoken lad who just loves playing football.
One of his closest mates at the club seems to be kit man, Brandon Ashton, a rare Mancunian voice in this multinational dressing room.
The Belgian also presents a fine excuse for the programme-makers to have a poke at Jose Mourinho, with scenes of the player’s incredible passes and goals being interspersed with the former Chelsea manager dissing him before he sold him on from the London club.
Other intimate scenes include Sergio Aguero lamenting that his nine-year-old Benjamin lives most of the time in Argentina with his mother Gianinna (Diego Maradona’s daughter), and we follow Benjamin Mendy to a specialist in Barcelona where he gets the news that his injury will keep him out for the rest of the season.
However, none of the stars at City shines brighter than Guardiola.
One of the main story arcs is signalled with the question as to whether the manager’s brand of ‘tippy-tappy’ football could work in the rough’n’tumble of the Premier League. Spoiler alert: It can.
There are plenty players who’ve fallen out with Guardiola, but here you see the Catalan’s charismatic side as he frantically moves moves coloured magnets around a whiteboard, preaching the gospel of expansive, expressive football.
One of the best scenes has Guardiola joining in the Kevin de Bruyne chant amid joyous celebrations in the dressing room following the Belgian’s winner against Chelsea.
Although these documentary projects always carry some element of risk for a brand, you can see why it makes so much sense for Manchester City to let the cameras have such access.
The truth is they don’t have the trophy-strewn history of some of their rivals, and since the Sheikh Mansour takeover there has always been a whiff of vulgar new-money about the club.
Cue the input of long-suffering fans like Noel Gallagher to remind us that City are very much a part of their hometown culture, complete with a stint in the third tier as recently as the late 1990s.
For Amazon, the show is part of push to grow its audience of subscribers in a TV environment that is undergoing some major changes.
The series also lays some groundwork for the streaming company’s access to live Premier League games from next season.
For viewers in this country, the show will appeal beyond the small numbers of Manchester City fans to anyone with a general interest in the game, and it probably has enough human-interest strands to draw in punters who wouldn’t dream of watching a live football match.
Put partisan prejudices aside and it’s obvious that these are glorious days at Manchester City. In many ways, a magic carpet as much as a blue one.