Arse­nal: All Or Noth­ing and the foot­ball doc­u­men­tary boom

Even cur­so­ry fol­low­ers of the Pre­mier League would like­ly have been aware of Arsenal’s dis­as­trous start to the ²¹⁄₂₂ cam­paign – win­less and goal­less after three games, the North Lon­don side lan­guished at the bot­tom of the table. What gave this begin­ning, their worst start to a sea­son in 67 years, an extra fris­son of gal­lows fas­ci­na­tion was the knowl­edge that Ama­zon had brought their cam­eras to the Emi­rates for the lat­est in their pop­u­lar All Or Noth­ing series of behind-the-scenes foot­ball documentaries.

Foot­ball is the most pop­u­lar sport in the world whilst the Eng­lish Pre­mier League is the rich­est, most pop­u­lar league – a new rights deal signed for the begin­ning of the ²²⁄₂₃ sea­son will pur­port­ed­ly see the league bring­ing in £10.5 bil­lion for the next three years, with this year’s win­ners earn­ing £176 mil­lion in prize mon­ey. Hav­ing recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed its thir­ti­eth anniver­sary, the demand for the Pre­mier League shows no signs of slow­ing down. When allied to the almost infi­nite land­scape of social media, com­pe­ti­tion amongst stream­ing ser­vices and clubs with one eye per­pet­u­al­ly trained on glob­al mar­kets, it’s clear that con­tent is king and that the only way to sate con­sumers’ insa­tiable appetite is in cre­at­ing ever more of it, going to areas that are dif­fi­cult to access, even in this age of ever-present communication. 

Although it is Italia 90 that is wide­ly cred­it­ed for spark­ing a renais­sance in Eng­lish foot­ball cul­ture, it was England’s cam­paign to qual­i­fy for the suc­ces­sive World Cup in the USA four years lat­er that arguably deliv­ered the grand antecedent of the foot­ball doc­u­men­taries we have today. The Impos­si­ble Job, Ken McGill’s con­tri­bu­tion to Chan­nel 4’s pio­neer­ing doc­u­men­tary strand Cut­ting Edge remains aston­ish­ing in its inti­ma­cy to the sub­ject, fol­low­ing as it does Gra­ham Taylor’s ulti­mate­ly doomed cam­paign to lead Eng­land to the 1994 World Cup. The film fea­tured an incred­i­ble use of pitch side audio (Taylor’s remon­stra­tion with an offi­cial over a penal­ty not giv­en, ​“The referee’s got me the sack!” is pathos of the high­est order), whilst its depic­tion of the con­flu­ence of media and fan pres­sure with­in foot­ball is ever prescient.

The ear­ly-90s hand­held aes­thet­ic of The Impos­si­ble Job could not be fur­ther from the slick drone-assist­ed pack­age of an All Or Noth­ing, and one sus­pects nei­ther could its free­dom of expres­sion, with mul­ti­mil­lion pound clubs con­tent to allow cam­eras with­in their four walls, albeit with a large degree of cre­ative con­trol over how they are depict­ed. It’s cer­tain­ly some­thing that was not the case with Mat Hodgson’s The Four Year Plan, a sto­ry of how a group of investors aimed to res­cue Queen’s Park Rangers from the brink of liq­ui­da­tion and back into the rich­es of the Pre­mier League that has the serendip­i­tous dra­mat­ic qual­i­ty that, as also evi­denced by the likes of Ondi Timoner’s Dig! and the Edward Snow­den epic Cit­i­zen­four, would have any doc­u­men­tary mak­er shak­ing their hands with glee. 

The Four Year Plan, which was once described by The Guardian as ​“the most vivid insight into the run­ning of a foot­ball club yet com­mit­ted to film”, opens with the dis­claimer that the boss­es ​“did not con­trol what end­ed up in the film” and the result is a coarse embod­i­ment of the tan­gled rela­tion­ship between extor­tion­ate sums of mon­ey and the emo­tion­al bond with a club that is the core of the beau­ti­ful game. It remains the only foot­ball doc­u­men­tary, to my knowl­edge, that sees one of the club own­ers exas­per­at­ed­ly watch­ing a play­er and open­ly shout that they ​“want to fuck­ing sell this idiot!”

The per­cep­tion that every play­er is now so social media savvy – although Paul Pogba’s vac­u­ous The Pog­men­tary, anoth­er Ama­zon pro­duc­tion, resem­bles one long Tik­Tok video and is the nadir of this recent doc­u­men­tary vogue – is anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant rea­son to account for the rise in behind the scenes doc­u­men­taries, whose unique angle is that they can pur­port to show the ​‘unvar­nished’ view of what hap­pens with­in the walls of some of the most famous British clubs, away from the PR-assist­ed Tweets and script­ed promos. 

All or Noth­ing: Arse­nal, has its own moment of serendip­i­tous dra­ma, that of Pierre-Emer­ick Aubameyang’s dis­ci­pli­nary trou­bles which, in the season’s (and show’s) most star­tling event sees the club’s star play­er and main goalscor­ing threat exclud­ed from the squad and ulti­mate­ly sold to Cata­lan giants Barcelona. At the time it was a saga that caused con­ster­na­tion amongst the fan­base, torn between sup­port­ing the line of uphold­ing the club’s val­ues to the real­i­sa­tion that with­out his goals the club may not achieve its desired lev­el of suc­cess. The scenes depict­ing the fall­out and nego­ti­a­tions with lawyers are gen­uine­ly star­tling and help put a fresh per­spec­tive on the events.

Else­where All or Noth­ing: Arse­nal man­ages to weave in a few touch­ing sub-plots such as Bukayo Saka’s emer­gence from the vic­tim of racist abuse, fol­low­ing his penal­ty miss for Eng­land in the Euro 2021 final loss, to one of Arsenal’s piv­otal play­ers. Saka is indeed one of the stars of the show; when he’s not scor­ing a vin­di­cat­ing penal­ty against Chelsea he’s dol­ing out presents to the Arse­nal staff dressed as San­ta. The focus on key play­ers through­out is also enlight­en­ing and puts a new per­spec­tive on their per­for­mance dur­ing the sea­son, though the doc­u­men­tary can­not ful­ly escape the dra­mat­ic iner­tia that often besets these shows, set­tling into a rhythm of match – dress­ing room – recov­ery that mir­rors the season’s beats but may be of less fas­ci­na­tion to the casu­al view­er. Things reach an impres­sive lev­el of banal­i­ty as we watch Alexan­dre Lacazette dis­cuss shop­ping at Ikea; Gor­don and Parreno’s Zidane: A 21st Cen­tu­ry Por­trait this isn’t.

Although the dénoue­ment doesn’t give the series a hoped-for Hol­ly­wood end­ing (spoil­er alert: Arse­nal even­tu­al­ly miss out on a cov­et­ed fourth spot by one point), Arsenal’s fail­ure to over­come their North Lon­don rivals Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur is in keep­ing with an unof­fi­cial tra­di­tion of the vast major­i­ty of these doc­u­men­taries: both sea­sons of Netflix’s social­ly acute Sun­der­land ​‘Til I Die end with the North-East club on a down­ward spi­ral, whilst Tottenham’s own All or Noth­ing entry saw Spurs also ulti­mate­ly fail to reach fourth place. 

The forth­com­ing Ryan Reynolds-star­ring Wel­come To Wrex­ham – how­ev­er stir­ring its first trail­er is – also fol­lows the same pat­tern. This sto­ry­telling is in keep­ing with the cycle of hope, dis­ap­point­ment and renew­al that is the peren­ni­al lifeblood of a foot­ball fan, as well as under­lin­ing the per­cep­tion that ulti­mate­ly these doc­u­men­taries are of more enjoy­ment to the rub­ber­neck­ing fans of rival clubs. Ulti­mate­ly the great­est dra­ma still takes place on the pitch, where Arse­nal, at the begin­ning of the ²²⁄₂₃ sea­son, are cur­rent­ly doing very well.