Bob­by Rob­son: More Than a Manager

The sto­ry of Bob­by Rob­son is the sto­ry of Eng­lish foot­ball in the mod­ern era: such was his impact on the nation­al game dur­ing the sec­ond half of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. This excel­lent doc­u­men­tary from Gabriel Clarke and Torquil Jones chron­i­cles the highs and lows of Robson’s remark­able 60-year career, through­out which the miner’s son from the North East nev­er stopped smil­ing. As per the title, the film also looks at Robson’s life away from foot­ball; his long bat­tle with can­cer and vital work estab­lish­ing the Bob­by Rob­son Foun­da­tion char­i­ty before his death in 2009.

Dur­ing man­age­r­i­al spells at Ipswich Town, PSV Eind­hoven, Por­to and Barcelona Rob­son col­lect­ed sil­ver­ware while trans­form­ing the respec­tive cul­tures of these famous clubs. Those who played under or worked along­side him – Gary Linek­er, Alan Shear­er, Paul Gas­coigne, Pep Guardi­o­la, José Mour­in­ho, Sir Alex Fer­gu­son and the Brazil­ian Ronal­do fea­ture promi­nent­ly here in can­did talk­ing heads seg­ments – speak effu­sive­ly about his tac­ti­cal nous and exten­sive knowl­edge of the game. Most cru­cial­ly, though, they speak of the gen­eros­i­ty, warmth and humour that made him a role mod­el to so many. At one point Linek­er describes Rob­son as the great­est Eng­lish man­ag­er of all time, and on the evi­dence pro­vid­ed it’s pret­ty hard to argue otherwise.

This being a World Cup year, spe­cial atten­tion is giv­en to Robson’s suc­cess­ful stint as Eng­land man­ag­er between 1982 and 1990, cul­mi­nat­ing in the semi final defeat to West Ger­many at Italia 90. The footage of this slid­ing doors moment for Eng­lish foot­ball (some may argue Eng­lish soci­ety at large) – Gazza’s tears, Waddle’s miss and all that – has been replayed and repack­aged ad nau­se­um, yet Clarke and Jones some­how make it feel invig­o­rat­ing­ly, ago­nis­ing­ly fresh. By using unseen archive mate­r­i­al from that trau­mat­ic night in Turin, the direc­tors effec­tive­ly enable us to expe­ri­ence the match from Robson’s per­spec­tive. The result is odd­ly cathar­tic, and a fit­ting tes­ta­ment to one of football’s most genial and uni­fy­ing figures.

Bob­by Rob­son: More Than a Man­ag­er is released in select the­atres on 31 May, avail­able on dig­i­tal down­load on 1 June and Blu-ray/D­VD on 4 June.