There is a moment in Amazon’s new fly-on-the-wall Newcastle United documentary where the club’s co-owner Mehrdad Ghodoussi spells out the scale of the ownership group’s ambition.
“We want to be a Real Madrid, a Barcelona,” he says, staring almost directly into the camera.
It is a remarkable statement that sums up the energy around the club – a buzz that is captured perfectly in this eminently watchable documentary that strays into the territory of a glossy PR job.
Cameras followed the club for the last five months of a transformative campaign and accessed board meetings at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, recruitment summits in Saudi Arabia and into the homes of Kieran Trippier and Bruno Guimaraes.
On the evidence of the first two episodes of this four-part series, the first of which drops on Amazon on Friday, there are plenty of jaw-dropping moments.
It opens with sweeping shots of skyscrapers in Riyadh as chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan spells out the club’s intention to be “number one”.
This is the first time a British camera crew not employed by the club has sat down with the influential and controversial governor of the PIF but the conversation rarely veers from his plan to grow the club.
Granted there is a short segment dealing with the controversy around the ownership but critical voices are unsurprisingly in short supply.
The Newcastle United Fans Against Sportswashing group complained last week that they had not been interviewed and Amanda Staveley brushes off the human rights issue with one sentence.
Of accusations that the fund is essentially interchangeable with the Saudi state, Al-Rumayyan says simply: “Some journalists, they really don’t understand what PIF is.” That will be enough for a chunk of fans, but it feels like an opportunity missed to dig deeper as sport’s tectonic plates are shifted.
In other memorable moments Ghodoussi bristles at selling clubs trying to rip off Newcastle.
“We have a tax on us,” he says in one meeting. “Whatever anyone thinks is fair market value, let’s add 20 per cent to it and sell it to Newcastle.”
To prove the point, a clip shows Newcastle’s attempts to argue Everton down from their £60m asking price for Anthony Gordon to a figure closer to £40m, a deal that ends with hugs and a video call from Staveley to their new signing.
She also gets genuinely animated when recalling the attempts of rival clubs to stop Newcastle from getting Saudi partners on board by issuing a blanket ban on associated parties sponsoring the club.
“I was shocked that we could buy a club, pay full price and then the rules just change. I think that was what pissed me off,” she says.
“You’ve got to remember, nobody likes competition. The Champions League places are tight, there’s only four, other clubs do everything they can to make sure those Champions League places are available to as few a people as possible.”
In the first episode the owners are front and centre but that is probably as much to do with Eddie Howe’s reluctance to allow the cameras into his inner sanctum.
When they do get a peek it makes for fascinating moments, with the manager’s pep talk before the Manchester United game a rare insight into a side of Howe seldom seen as he rages at Erik ten Hag’s description of his side. His players, the articulate Dan Burn in particular, come across really well.
At a city centre premiere last week, fans who crammed the cinema came away satisfied and for them at least this series arrives with a happy ending.
But it’s difficult to get away from the idea that what you see on screen is pretty much what the club want you to see.
Prime Video’s new series We Are Newcastle United launched on 11 August, with a new episode released every Friday
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/ZqzDxEr
Post a Comment