All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur (2020) Review

Amazon Prime brings an all-access area into the 2019/2020 season of Tottenham Hotspur in the premier league.

With player contracts coming to an end a champion’s league run, a new manager at the helm and a global pandemic affecting the world. This docuseries provides a real insight into the world of football from all angles. All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur shows many perspectives of the season unwinding; from players, managers, medical staff and the chairman. All theses perspectives really give you feeling of all angles.

The documentary constructed a great narrative from the beginning of the season straight through to the end. The beginning starts with Daniel Levy the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur. What almost feels like a bit of a sales pitch trying to make the club look attractive as possible and a big club it then changes to the collaboration with the NFL. This bit felt a bit unjustified but also did create the world of the documentary at the same time showing the scale and size of the club and importantly the stadium.

The rest was very formulaic storytelling with seeing Mauricio Pochettino leaving and new manager Jose Mourinho arriving and looking to get the team to qualify for European football. It is evident how the fans felt about Mourinho’s appointment as well. Expecting trophies. Mourinho struggles to find his best eleven and is dealt major blows with many injuries to several first-team players such as stars like Harry Kane and Son Heung-Min. I wish I had more of an insight into how Mourinho went about solving the problems but the docuseries opted to just have the narration combined with showing that players were being involved such as youngster Japhet Tanganga.

Filming style I loved the fly on the wall A filming technique that I really liked was during the changing room. Cameras installed as a fly on the wall kind of style meaning that the cameras are fixed all the time so they turn into part of the room rather than being operated by a person I think makes a more authentic feel. I prefer this style over someone filming with a camera handheld as it provided less distraction compared to a camera that was shaky. However, I do think it missed the emotional impact at crucial points that would have been good to catch on camera. An example would be when Son got sent off, it would’ve been good if a cameraman followed him down the tunnel and we saw Son kick off about the camera. I think that would’ve given the documentary a bit more edge but other than that I thought it was a good way to film it.

It was interesting to see players reflect on the season and some of the ways they handled situations. It was nice to get an insight into Jan Vertongen and it did make it quite impactful when he wasn’t renewing his contract despite his footballing friend Toby Alderweireld renewing his.

I thought this was a well-constructed documentary but felt like it could’ve let me in a bit more on the day to day running of the club such as Jose Mourinho picking a starting 11 or the club recruiting players and how their scouting works.

Overall, I rate this docuseries a 3.5/5