Having watched ‘All or Nothing: Manchester City’ , ‘All or Nothing: New Zealand All Blacks’ and basically all the NFL editions, I was expecting the Spurs one to be a ‘circle jerky’, PR puff piece from the club that gives you a tiny bit of swearing in the changing room to make it seem authentic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have a pal who is a cameraman. His mate worked on the Man City one and said it was so tightly controlled that at one point Pep kicked a boot and it whacked De Bruyne in the face Ferguson-style and the cameramen weren\u2019t allowed to leave the changing rooms without handing over their memory cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, with that in my mind and having just finished Episode 9, unlike predicting Spurs results, I was right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just like its City predecessor making out Abu Dhabi is some bastion of positive energy, we see Daniel Levy getting more screen time than Spurs\u2019 best manager in my lifetime whose part in the film ended in Episode 1 (of 9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s possible to show the Chairman\u2019s job in a football documentary as anyone who has watched the excellent Sunderland \u2018Til I Die will testify but this showed us nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No insight into transfers, you never see Levy stressed or concerned, it\u2019s always just ‘nice’ albeit a little bit awkward, culminating in scenes that are frankly unmemorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The one time it wasn\u2019t mundane, was where he sat Tanguy Ndombele down with a translator and told him about his A-Level results in one of the most bizarre inclusions to a documentary I’d ever witnessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a Spurs fan you know all the results and you don\u2019t really want to go back over them but then I guess this is for a wider audience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hence showing a lot of Spurs winning (in relation to the actual season!) in the documentary with the movie style slow-motion, music getting louder just before the ball hits the net. Yeah brilliant, we managed to come back from a goal down against Olympiakos! (No disrespect to the Greek lads).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don\u2019t get to see the changing room after the 7-2 Bayern defeat and the only time we saw a bit of passion really was the semi-infamous Hugo and Son halftime bust-up against Everton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dressing room stuff is kind of good to watch but it would have been great to compare Pochettino to Mourinho a little more as Jose\u2019s shtick of saying \u2018we need to cut out mistakes and press more\u2019 interjected with swear words gets a bit samey after a while. In the City one, Pep did seem to mix it up a little more which was good from an entertainment point of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And maybe we\u2019re not seeing everything, or maybe it\u2019s the way it\u2019s edited but my big takeaway was that nearly to a man they seem a really nice bunch of lads, the type you\u2019d let go out with your sister and I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s what you want in a football team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You kind of need a few rabble-rousers, players ‘who leave it on people’ in training (admittedly Dier did that to Son once in training!) and people who will demand the highest levels from the others. Your Keane\u2019s, Terry\u2019s, Vieira\u2019s, Kompany\u2019s etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These kind of people don\u2019t grow on trees but from almost every glimpse of half times you never got that feeling whilst they all sat there quietly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So maybe this documentary was good in that it was similar to the Spurs side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clean cut, aesthetically pleasing and sometimes a pleasant watch but needs to be more edgy and take more risks to fulfil potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spurs For Life Rating: 6\/10<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"