“I think it’s going to blow people away,” said Keith Andrews when talking about the new series All or Nothing: Manchester City. He’s probably right.
I headed along to the premiere of the new Prime Video documentary in Manchester last night. Here’s what I took from episode one.
Pep’s enthusiasm is very, very real
You might have wondered if the frantic in-game energy from Pep Guardiola on the sidelines is legitimate. Surely a man can’t naturally radiate such energy? Maybe it’s a ploy to get every last inch out of his players?
Well, from the evidence in All or Nothing, this is all real. Behind the scenes, he’s clearly a deeply passionate man, obsessed with detail and maximising the output from his squad. He is as animated as an electric-type Pokemon in the dressing room and even seems to derive great pleasure from the mundane things, like moving magnetic sliders on the tactics board.
The highlight of dressing room Pep is in the aftermath of the 1-0 win against Chelsea last September, though, when we see the Spaniard get involved in roaring “Ohhhhh, Kevin de Bruyne” to the tune of Seven Nation Army.
Jose doesn’t come out of it too well
Speaking of De Bruyne, episode one of All of Nothing happens to include footage of Jose Mourinho dodging questions about the Belgian during their stint together at Chelsea. The passage illuminates effectively the idea that De Bruyne had to battle to make it as a top European player, but it also happens to act as a little reminder that the current Manchester United manager once made a big, big error of judgement. I’m sure that was nowhere near the producers’ minds in the process of making the show...
Kevin De Bruyne, like most of his teammates, was at the Printworks last night for the premiere. However, many in the cinema theatre were shocked to see him hobble in on crutches and the news was visibly broken there and then: He’s going to be out of action for a while.
The Manchester City boardroom is ruthless
The documentary is not just a view of the first team and an insight into the minds of the coaching staff. The fly-on-the-wall nature also makes its way upstairs to the boardroom, where the curtain is truly pulled back.
We see the business-like, calculated discussion the club’s directors have in the wake of Benjamin Mendy’s knee ligament injury early in the 2017/18 season. The scene juxtaposes Mendy’s consultation with a Barcelona-based doctor with the ‘suits’ in Manchester discussing his length of absence. Immediately, they are talking about the January transfer window and that a recruitment plan for a replacement in the Frenchman’s position should be drawn up. It’s ruthless stuff.
Kyle Walker is a decent camera operator
One of the great features of the documentary is the ‘player cam’ idea, which is exactly what it says on the tin. In episode one, Kyle Walker takes the camera and roams around the training base and gets some excellent footage of Fabian Delph calling a member of staff “a bell” in response to a suggestion that his ego is getting bigger and bigger.
It’s one of several moments of comedy in the show, most of which are candid. The pick of the bunch is a scene where Vincent Kompany insists that the kitman joins him in a cryotherapy chamber. The kitman is Brandon Ashton and he is quite the character, particularly when shoved into -130 degree temperatures.
Pep loves a noisy dressing room
Throughout the show, we see a dressing room that is a seemingly jubilant place pretty much all the time. Interestingly, it seems like a happy zone pre-match, with tonnes of chatter going on that doesn’t seem to be overly game-based or tactical.
Guardiola sheds some light on this, saying that he loves a noisy dressing room. Silence is bad before a big game, he thinks.
However - and I don’t know who is responsible for this - but I do hope we get to find out who controls the Manchester City dressing room playlist at some point in the documentary. We get a quick few bars of a Spanish / Portuguese tune blaring out of the speakers after one particular home win, and it is not good. Imagine Despacito, but worse.
Given the musical icons associated with the football club, you would have thought that a decent taste in music might have rubbed off on some of the players but that is alas not the case.
All or Nothing: Manchester City will launch exclusively on Prime Video on 17th August 2018. Prime members will be able to stream the series via the Prime Video app for TVs, connected devices including Fire TV, mobile devices and online.
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