As a lifelong football fan, I have always been intrigued by what goes on in the manager’s mind and in the dressing room.
As a kid, watching those little snapshots of life on the terraces on the now-defunct BBC ‘Football Focus’ which would head up the afternoon of sport on ‘Grandstand’ would give you hope that maybe one day you would evolve beyond the street and playground to make it for your local side.
Of course, back then, fans would flip between BBC and ITV to catch the late, great Brian Moore on ‘On The Ball’; inviting us to witness the lives and trials of those old legends, amongst them the recently departed Kevin Keegan who talked to Brian about his new life in Hamburg after achieving all he could with Liverpool after their 1977 European Cup Final win against Borussia Monchengladbach.
Football fans are in turns loyal and tribal and woe-be-tied anyone who strays from the path. However, I think it may be wise to adopt the same neutrality that we strangely adopt whenever an English side hits it big in Europe in the Champions League and take in an excellent new Amazon Prime documentary, A BEAUTIFUL OBSESSION, which focuses on the last two years of recently departed Man City manager Pep Guardiola, arguably the finest football manager living in the world today.
Across four episodes, we are invited into a sacrosanct world that we seldom see, save for those brief media soundbites we get from the managers at the end of a game on Match Of The Day or Super Sunday. As anyone who has taken up the mantle of the England men’s football side has experienced, the proverbial ‘Poison Chalice‘ job (touched on in the excellent documentary during his tenure, BOBBY ROBSON: MORE THAN A MANAGER and the Graham Taylor full-on DO I NOT LIKE THAT?) yields all manner of surprises.
A BEAUTIFUL OBSESSION is above and beyond what you might expect in a football documentary factual, not least in that this one, co-produced by Oscar-winning film-maker Kevin MacDonald, has the full backing and approval of the Man City board up to the top, which makes it all the more fascinating and watchable.
On the one hand, you may be disappointed with the lack of football footage from matchdays and key games, which is depicted here as a mere snapshot of the specific elements of the season, but as a neutral you will certainly find the emotional elements of the story behind City’s recent seasons very compelling viewing.
It is a testament into how effective this plays out that you don’t really need to know a lot about football to appreciate the emotional core of the documentary.
Guardiola does come across as a very deeply reflective manager, one who has certainly had his fair share of challenges both personal and professional in the ten years in which he has managed to knock all-comers of their perch, but the key challenges of the last two years in which he has battled with Mikel Arteta heading up Arsenal in a rivalry to match Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson come boiling over and spittle off the screen to enthral.
Be prepared for some very emotionally profane exchanges as Guardiola lays his soul bare for the good of the team in the hope that they will reciprocate his passion and desire. It is immaterial that we know the outcome of how this season went because it did unfold the way it did, as the passion and the discomfort at not getting the message across evokes both empathy and sympathy.
A BEAUTIFUL OBSESSION is a terrific example of how to show the human face of football, something that is often only relayed through the fans who aren’t going to be hoodwinked. If a week is a long time in politics, then four episodes of this show make it a day or so in a football context.
Guardiola is both an admirable and affable person to be privy to here and I am sure he will rediscover his muse and mantra elsewhere, ready to stamp his mark on the game again with his undisputed talent as a miracle worker in the beautiful game.
Don’t go away just yet, Pep, we need you. For the moment, let us enjoy this.
A BEAUTIFUL OBSESSION airs from August 19th on Amazon Prime Video