I didn't know I needed this incredible sports doco in my life
Hello football, my old friend ...
Footballer Dele Alli is lying on a massage table as a masseuse gives his calves a solid lube.
The multi-millionaire soccer star should be relaxing with his team mates, who are getting the rub down treatment alongside him after a vigorous training session for their team Tottenham Hotspurs.
Instead, Alli looks serious. He has something on his mind.
“When you brush your teeth,” he asks sternly, “what order do you do it in? Do you wet the toothbrush, put the toothpaste on, then wet the toothbrush again?”
Everyone in the room shakes their heads in disbelief, then looks at him like he’s gone mad.
Alli is one of England’s best football players and the most exciting goal scorer Tottenham Hotspurs have, yet he’s been over-lubricating his toothbrush by double-watering it for years, possibly his entire life.
Puzzled, Alli raises an eyebrow, and keeps asking: “You don’t put water on again?”
Welcome to the life of a professional football player. Alli, who earned nearly NZ$200,000 a week for doing literally nothing during the UK’s Covey lockdown, owns a collection of luxury cars, and dates model Ruby Mae, can’t even brush his teeth properly.
He can score goals though. Here’s one. Here’s another. Fucking hell, right?
The Amazon Prime Video documentary All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur isn’t really about Alli and all those goals though. It’s about football. It’s about life in an ultra-stressful bubble. It’s about running a popular club in the supercharged atmosphere football delivers in the UK. It’s about Jose Mourinho becoming the club’s coach mid-season and turning their fortunes around.
It is, admits Mourinho early on in the doco, about winning. “I hate to lose,” he says.
Yes, there are goals. Lots of them. There are plenty of egos on show too. But what I love about All or Nothing are the little moments. The cameras catch them all: Alli’s dopey toothpaste question on the massage table, gossip about training issues over lunch, the casual one-on-one catch-ups in the coach’s office, or the quivering bottom lip on the face of Eric Dier as he sulks after being replaced 30 minutes into a game.
But it’s about more than football. Thanks to the doco’s timing, landing when there are fuck all sports games being played, it’s about rejuvenating everyone’s love for a bit of a kick-around.
By now, we should be halfway through the Four Nations. The All Blacks should have the Bledisloe Cup secured in the cupboard. The Black Caps should be over in Pakistan or India or Sri Lanka playing an endless series of one-dayers. There should be Warriors games and Phoenix matches to enjoy every weekend. We should be bloody sick of it all.
Good old Covey got all of that cancelled.
I can’t remember the last time I watched a decent rugby game. Or got excited about a soccer goal. When did the Black Caps tie that World Cup final that I stayed up until 4am for? Cos it feels like a decade ago.
What we have had, however, are a bunch of really great sports documentaries to savour. Earlier this year, Netflix gave us The Last Dance, an exultant and extraordinary 10-parter about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls trying to win their sixth NBA title in eight seasons.
I’ve just finished wading through the Amazon Prime Video series World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji for a Stuff.co.nz review, a brutal, no-holds-barred 671km race completed on little food or sleep with Bear Grylls yelling all the time.
It’s excellent viewing made all the better by the fact Kiwis are really freaking good at beating the Aussies at adventure racing.
And now I’m addicted to All or Nothing, and the incredible highs and brutal lows - often in the same week - that only playing football at the top can bring. As embarrassed midfielder Dier declares after his early replacement: “Nothing can replace the feeling of playing football at this level … it’s like an addiction.”
All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.