“This moment, we won’t be living again, in our lives. My advice? Don’t drop it.”
Pep Guardiola, moving little markers around a white board faster than the eye can see. Pep Guardiola hugging, kissing, rubbing his boys as they file out to the pitch. Pep Guardiola, on his feet one moment, down on his haunches the next, leaping around like a nursery rhyme goat.
The first surprise, watching All Or Nothing, Amazon’s new documentary about Manchester City, is how much the world’s coolest football manager feels a little bit… well, a little bit like David Brent. There are times, during the team talk scenes, you half expect ‘Simply The Best’ to start blaring out of a ghetto blaster.
The difference, of course, is that Pep is very successful. Would this documentary have been wildly different had the arrival of the cameras not coincided with last season's emphatic, record-breaking league victory?
Probably not. There is more than a whiff of propaganda here, and it’s hard to shrug off the impression All Or Nothing is a calculated attempt to “extend City’s global brand”. For hardened Premier League followers the narration, clearly aimed at non-football fans, borders on patronising.
Which is not to say that if you abandon hopes of a ‘warts and all’ look at what really goes on at a modern football club, All Or Nothing isn’t an enjoyable watch.
Episode one is about setting up the season. It covers, among other things, the arrival of Benjamin Mendy, who initially looks like the missing piece of the jigsaw in Pep's masterplan before picking up a horrific injury in September. His resilience is remarkable and Mendy quickly emerges as one of the team’s real characters.
Elsewhere, between some clearly very staged ‘boardroom’ scenes, there are some touching moments, such as the entire team singing 'the Kevin De Bruyne song' in the dressing room after his match-winning performance against Chelsea – and against Jose Mourinho, the manager who spurned him early in his career.
Then there is a short, enjoyable passage focused on the kit man, a local guy who has been at the club cleaning boots since he left school at 16, way before the glitz and glamour of the Sheikh Mansour era. He is clearly cherished by the players - Vincent Kompany makes him join him in a ice chamber - and gives the episode its most human moments. If All Or Nothing can’t realistically be a real glimpse behind the shrouded world of the dressing room, perhaps it can tell the story of the unsung heroes who really make a club tick, helping join the dots between fans, the community and the billionaires they cheers on. Let’s hope for more of this in future episodes.
But for now at least, the real star is Pep. There is a candid moment when the manager says: “The truth is I don’t have all the answers. But sometimes I pretend I do in front of the players to give them confidence.”
You see in that moment how lonely a job football management really is, and why the men in these roles have come to fascinate us, perhaps more than even the most exciting players.
When you’re the man in charge, you can’t sit moodily with your headphones on, or ‘do your talking on the pitch’. You have to cajole, inspire, leap about. You have to be prepared to be a bit Brent. Pep - the greatest in world at all of it - is impossible to take your eyes off.
