When the content of football loses sight of reality
Being too early, Marc Andreessen once said sadly, is the same as being wrong. Granted, Andreesen, the software engineer, angel investor and all-round Silicon Valley expert, has applied the maxim in the context of his own somewhat bitter experiences in the world of cloud computing, but it works surprisingly well as an analysis of 'Being: Liverpool .”
If the title is unknown, that wouldn't be much of a surprise. The show, which depicted Liverpool's preparations for the 2012–13 Premier League season, lasted just one series, running for just six episodes. The subsequent cultural half-life is also limited; those few elements that have stuck around perfectly illustrate why it wasn't renewed.
There was, for example, the fleeting shot of the hallway in the home of Brendan Rodgers, the club's newly appointed coach, dominated by a moody, black-and-white portrait of… himself. Or the images of Rodgers waving three envelopes – containing, he said, the names of three players who would abandon him during the season. His audience seemed bewildered at best and mortified at worst.
It would of course later turn out that both incidents were slightly more nuanced than initially assumed. The envelope trick was adapted from a method once used – albeit with considerably more success – by Alex Ferguson. The portrait was a gift from a disability charity that Rodgers had worked closely with during his time at his previous club, Swansea.
Still, the damage was done. Critical reception to the documentary was mixed, but the response from fans – Liverpool and others – was not. It was seen as an exercise in downright hubris, a source of shame or hilarity, six hours of continuous cringing. Rodgers has probably never been able to shake the impression that he has at least as much in common with David Brent as he does with Pep Guardiola.
It was therefore striking to hear that Liverpool's owner – Fenway Sports Group – is at least toying with the idea of going back to the source. Nothing has been signed yet according to Bloombergbut the club is in discussions with a number of production houses about commissioning something that, as you might imagine, won't be called 'Being: Liverpool 2'.
That Liverpool are even willing to entertain this idea is a testament to how much the world has changed. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when football became awash in documentaries. It could be 2015, with the launch of 'Class of '92: Out of Their League', or a follow-up to the arrival of Formula 1's 'Drive To Survive' in 2019. Maybe it was a year later, and the pandemic success of 'The Last Dance'. But maybe it doesn't matter. The effect is largely the same.
There are hundreds of football documentaries at the moment. Some are historical – portraits of players and paeans to coaches – but the trend is for current events: limited series that promise to take viewers into the inner sanctum, showing fans what the world inhabited by their heroes really looks like.
They, like the “All Or Nothing” series, can be commissioned (or at least agreed to) by teams. Or they could increasingly be dreamed up by the game's authorities themselves, as with the FIFA-approved/produced 'Captains of the World', or the upcoming 'Drive To Survive'-style project apparently getting the green light from Major League Soccer, which is slowly but surely being developed. has become a division of Apple.
(“Welcome To Wrexham” is a bit of an outlier in this context. Indeed, it is not entirely clear whether it should be cast as a documentary at all, regardless of the style in which it is shot. Documentarians after all “Welcome To Wrexham” only exists because of interference; the ongoing plot is driven by it. Even the stars refer to it, with a frequency that suggests it is intentional, as a kind of reality show.)
The same trend can be seen in all sports. Almost every major athletic endeavor – cricket, rugby, cycling, tennis, athletics – has been subjected to the same treatment in almost exactly the same time frame. The sport as a whole has very quickly adopted the principle that its activities extend beyond just the action on the field. Fans also seem to have a surprising, and money-making, appetite for learning how the sausage is made.
Of course, that can be partly attributed to a broader cultural shift. Within sports, the sheer weight of documentaries makes the idea less remarkable and less remarkable. There is a degree of safety in numbers.
Even beyond that, the sense that everything can be satisfied – that all our lives can be composed and commodified for the consumption of others – has become something close to a guiding ideology. There is not only acceptance that individuals or institutions want to tell their stories, but also the expectation that they will do so.
From that point of view, 'Being: Liverpool' no longer looks wrong. But unlike Andreessen's cloud computing venture, being too early wasn't the only mistake.
What unites all the documentaries that followed is how little they actually reveal about the reality of football. There are, of course, notable moments: José Mourinho's failed attempts to revive Dele Alli in Tottenham's season of 'All or Nothing'; Fabian Delph took it upon himself to explain the 'basics of football', to Guardiola's obvious confusion, in the Manchester City edition.
But usually they are so tightly controlled, so carefully assembled, so polished and expertly produced that any hope of understanding the brilliance is lost. They are documentaries played through the most flattering Instagram filter. They capture the story that the club or individual involved wants to be told.
They are authentic in the sense that merchandise can be authentic, with an official stamp and a hologram watermark. They are not authentic in the way that an earlier generation of football documentaries, in an era of less creative control, seemed to be. They show it, but they don't tell it.
And that was perhaps the real problem with 'Being: Liverpool'. It had not been polished to the highest possible shine. There were unguarded moments that showed what football looks like when it doesn't put its best face on camera.
Yes, there are many stirring speeches and examples of intimate camaraderie that stir the soul. But sometimes your manager also tries a team building exercise in a hotel dining room and no one really gets it. Those were the parts that made 'Being: Liverpool' embarrassing, but they also made it real in a way that few successors can match. It's safe to say that if a sequel airs, this mistake won't be repeated.
The Africa Cup of Nations is quickly turning into a kind of giant graveyard. Apart from Senegal and Nigeria, few of the continent's superpowers are having much luck in Ivory Coast.
The host nation has of course suffered the most, after being humiliated by Equatorial Guinea in its last group match and then only narrowly qualifying for the knockouts, and after fired his manager. But Ivory Coast is far from alone. Algeria, Ghana and Tunisia all left without winning a match.
Cameroon needed a goal in the 91st minute to avoid the same fate. Egypt – after losing Mohamed Salah to injury – went even further and scored in the 99th minute against an impressive Cape Verde to save a place in the last 16. (It feels a bit like every match in the tournament only really gets going when stoppage time arrives.)
It's too early to give a definitive explanation for this, but here are three theories, in descending order of likelihood, but crucially of increasing importance.
It could just be one of those things: an essentially random coincidence of factors that could easily be mistaken for a pattern.
It could be a sign that Africa's top is leveling off, but the base is broadening, as has been the case in much of football in recent years.
Or it could be that stars can have a double function. Of course, people like Salah, Mohammed Kudus of Ghana and Seko Fofana of Ivory Coast emit light, but they also exert gravity. Their presence can lead to dependency, reducing their teammates to little more than a supporting cast. (Witness Egypt's reaction to Salah's absence.)
It is both inhibiting for their own parties and encouraging for their opponents. It is also not a problem that occurs in, for example, Equatorial Guinea and Cape Verde, and they seem to be better off for it.
Someone else is breaking new ground
At this stage, Manchester United fans are ready to seize even the tiniest glimmer of hope as a sign of renewal. If things were as United think they should be, and England's biggest club were running the Premier League like a behemoth, then hiring a director would be little more than a footnote. Because that is not the case, a lot of reading is done the appointment of Omar Berrada.
Berrada, a Catalan, is of course the first appointment of Ineos, Jim Ratcliffe's conglomerate, recently installed as minority investor and majority controller of the 'football' part of what was once Manchester United Football Club. The arrival of Berrada as CEO is (understandably) being taken as a sign of the vision that Ineos – an organization that has long seen itself as a leader in sports – has for Old Trafford.
But while Berrada is undoubtedly a smart signing – smart, well-regarded, with great taste to follow on Twitter – and while signing him away from Manchester City is a popular move, praising it as a innovative decision. . United have gone to the best-managed club in football (asterisk pending) and hired the highest-ranking manager they could find. That's a smart move. It's not a new story.