Хөлбөмбөгийн клубүүд хувцас солих өрөөндөө камер байрлуулж, дотоод үйл явцыг олон нийтэд дэлгэх нь түгээмэл үзэгдэл боллоо.
Сүүлийн жилүүдэд Амазон компанийн “All or Nothing” цуврал болон бусад баримтат кинонууд хөлбөмбөгийн хувцас солих өрөөг олон нийтэд нээлттэй болгоод байна. Өмнө нь зөвхөн тоглогчид болон дасгалжуулагчдын хүрээнд үлддэг байсан хаалттай хаалганы цаана өрнөдөг үйл явдлууд одоо дэлгэцээр дамжин үзэгчдийн хүртээл болж байна. Тухайлбал, Пеп Гвардиолагийн Манчестер Сити дэх сүүлийн хоёр жилийг харуулсан “A Beautiful Obsession” цувралд түүний тоглогчидтойгоо хийсэн сэтгэл хөдлөл ихтэй яриа, Кайл Уокертай хийсэн ширүүн маргаан зэрэг нь ил тод гарчээ.
Энэхүү хандлага нь зөвхөн хөлбөмбөгөөр хязгаарлагдахгүй бөгөөд Формула 1 болон Америкийн хөлбөмбөгийн лигүүдэд ч түгээмэл ажиглагдах болов. Лутон Таун баг саяхан Лигийн нэгдүгээр дивизионы хүрээнд Ридинг багийг 4-3-ын харьцаатай хожих үедээ завсарлагааны үеэр дасгалжуулагч Жек Уилширийн тоглогчиддоо өгсөн үүрэг даалгаврыг сошиал хуудсаараа дамжуулан үзүүлсэн байна. Ийм төрлийн дүрс бичлэгүүд нь хөгжөөн дэмжигчдэд сонирхолтой байдаг ч хувцас солих өрөөний уламжлалт нууцлалыг алдагдуулж байна гэсэн шүүмжлэл ч дагуулдаг.
Манчестер Юнайтед клуб 2026-27 оны улиралд Амазон компанитай хамтран баримтат кино хийхээр болсон нь энэ төрлийн контент цаашид ч үргэлжлэхийг харуулж байна. Хэдийгээр эдгээр бичлэгүүд нь үзэгчдийн сонирхлыг татаж, хөлбөмбөгийн ертөнцийг илүү ойртуулах боловч багийн дотоод уур амьсгал болон хувийн орон зай хэрхэн өөрчлөгдөж байгаа нь асуулт хэвээр үлдлээ. Одоогоор баримтат кинонуудад тоглогчид болон дасгалжуулагчдын зөвшөөрөлтэй дүрсүүд л гарч байгаа бөгөөд хамгийн нууцлаг, маргаантай үйл явдлууд олон нийтэд ил болох нь ховор хэвээр байна.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
↓Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
As dramatic television scenes go, it is one of the most open, raw and unfiltered you will see this year.
“Guys, I want to confess something,” an emotional man announces to a room full of colleagues. “I’m f***ing divorced from the most beautiful woman on your planet.”
This loud, passionate, somewhat frantic character wildly gesticulates with his flailing arms as he continues to unleash his feelings on the group, with eyes wide and bright.
“It’s my wife, my ex-wife — I love her unbelievably, but we lost the passion,” he rails. “For many reasons, we lost the passion. I love her? Yes, absolutely! She loves me? Yes! But we lost the passion.”
Where is this scene being filmed? Is the office admin guy having a bit of a breakdown?
Nope, it’s just Pep Guardiola at Juventus away.
Prime Video’s new four-part docuseries on Guardiola and Manchester City, A Beautiful Obsession, offers an at-times extraordinary glimpse into the final two seasons of the 55-year-old’s Etihad reign.
(Tom Flathers/Manchester City FC)
“I feel sad, guys,” Guardiola, melancholy and morose this time, his voice hoarse and empty from shouting, says after defeat to Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League.
“I feel f***ing stupid. And do you know what is going to happen? You will have another manager.
“The f***ing performance you have done, all of you, it’s a disgrace, guys.
“I’m really f***ing tired. Tired. When I see that, I am exhausted, I am drained. I wanna quit. I’m so tired, my friends, I’m so tired. I feel alone. When you play like this, I feel alone.”
A football dressing room used to be an inner sanctum. It has traditionally been an area where players could exclusively air any grievances or issues in confidence, knowing those words were not being recorded, nor were they likely to be repeated to anyone outside of those four walls.
What happened in the dressing room, stayed in the dressing room. The manager, 11 players, a few subs, maybe a couple of coaches and a physio — that was it.
Not even the person who owned the club would be allowed in by some managers, so sacred was that space.
Cameras in dressing rooms were incredibly rare and, when they were allowed in for the odd documentary, they often produced remarkable footage.
An Impossible Job followed England’s failed 1994 World Cup qualification campaign and relied on the goodwill of Graham Taylor to capture personal and private moments that usually make England’s manager look a bit silly. It remains one of football’s greatest ever documentaries (and is well worth seeking out on YouTube if you haven’t seen it).
Warnock, a 2005 fly-on-the-wall programme following Sheffield United’s 2004-05 Championship campaign, was a documentary you could only enjoy by “being f***ing disciplined”.
Neil Warnock was not a shrinking violet in a 2005 Sheffield United documentary (Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
Premier Passions (about Sunderland in the late 1990s), The Four Year Plan (Queens Park Rangers, 2011) and Sunderland ‘Til I Die (2018 to 2024) are other iconic examples of the genre.
But they were rare — and even more enjoyable because of that rarity.
In the past decade, though, behind-the-scenes documentaries such as Amazon’s All or Nothing series with Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and City have literally opened the door to the football dressing room, which is now a common sight on our screens.
Just this week, Luton Town’s X feed promoted a video of manager Jack Wilshere’s half-time speech to his players during their 4-3 win against Reading in League One, having been 3-1 down at the break.
A look inside the dressing at Jack Wilshere’s half-time team talk with the Hatters trailing 3-1 away at Reading before coming back to win 4-3 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/l884KBKVws
— Luton Town FC (@LutonTown) August 17, 2026
We’ve seen Mikel Arteta use a real lightbulb to convey that a single bulb is meaningless without a connection to electricity (i.e., the players should play as a team). We’ve seen Jose Mourinho tell his Spurs players in a team meeting that they are too nice and need to be a “bunch of c***s”.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and a lightbulb starred in All or Nothing in 2021-22 (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)
It’s undoubtedly good entertainment, especially for casual viewers. Interactions such as those are an easy gateway into the sport in that the subject matter is fairly irrelevant; it’s the personal conversations and power dynamics that are captivating, no matter how performative they might be.
Perhaps filming in dressing rooms is just a natural extension of increased access to players and managers, which is an avenue broadcasters have been pushing for a while now, with pre-match and half-time interviews and more tunnel cameras.
Plus, via smartphones, cameras are in every dressing room anyway. Players take selfies in them after pretty much every match or film themselves or their managers (hello, Uncle David Moyes) celebrating.
Three storylines to watch ahead of this season
George Edwards and Rachael Tinde
We’ve seen increased intrusion in other sports, too.
In F1, another huge sport trying new ways to attract even bigger audiences, Netflix’s Drive to Survive series takes viewers into private meetings, while some years ago the sport began broadcasting conversations between drivers and race engineers during races. NFL has had ‘locker room’ access for years.
The question is: do we want or need this in football?
Are we, the viewer, really asking for this sacred space to be invaded? Or, in an astonishingly wealthy sport that is watched by billions, is everything just fair game and as paying viewers we should demand the most bang for our buck, no matter how invasive of people’s privacy that becomes?
In A Beautiful Obsession, another exchange between Guardiola and defender Kyle Walker, again in the dressing room, this time at Anfield following a 2-0 defeat to Liverpool, is almost awkward to watch, so searingly honest are the pair in what would normally be an incredibly private moment.
“You keep saying my name in every meeting and every f***ing thing,” Walker says, after Guardiola states the full-back lost possession during the match.
“Every f***ing meeting, it’s my name.”
Guardiola replies: “Maybe because you’re a captain.”
Walker says: “You didn’t want me to be a captain (the captain was decided by a player vote). I’ve reacted to someone else; I lost the ball, and you somehow bring my name into it.”
Kyle Walker and Pep Guardiola’s tense exchanges are there for all to see in A Beautiful Obsession (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Scenes like this open up all sorts of questions about the demands on players and managers. It’s one thing to ask them to do endless rounds of media interviews in which they can and do give bland answers via their stringent media training, but it’s quite another to bare their souls in this way — albeit Guardiola and Walker will, of course, have given approval for scenes to be screened from a production that was filmed and made in-house.
We also don’t get to see the most revealing exchanges. No documentary has yet screened a fight or anything particularly controversial, with the Walker-Guardiola row a very rare example of bad blood being aired publicly. That both have now left the club makes it far easier to show without any consequences.
But, again, the question should still be posed as to whether we want to see it at all. An area of mystery and intrigue kept out of bounds from the public is no bad thing. And, with club after club signing up to allow cameras into almost all areas of their stadium or training ground, they can be just another vehicle for players and managers to perform a PR act on camera.
Either way, the genie appears to be out of the bottle. Manchester United are the latest to sign up with Amazon, who are filming during the 2026-27 season.
Riveting behind-the-scenes footage and a fascinating insight into the true personalities of intriguing characters in football? Or another step to the sport becoming a bona fide soap opera? Maybe both are true.
Either way, the age of the football docudrama looks here to stay.
