SIR ALEX FERGUSON: NEVER GIVE IN

Featuring: Sir Alex Ferguson, Cathy Ferguson, Jason Ferguson, Mark Ferguson, Darren Ferguson, Gordon Strachan, Archie Knox, Ryan Giggs and Eric Cantona.
Writer: Mark Monroe
Director: Jason Ferguson

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 

Lately a wave of British sports documentaries have offered fly-on-the-wall insight into the personalities and dramas of premier league football. Some are the cinema of a club’s marketing division, notably the fan-service Liverpool FC pic, The End of The Storm, but most have been surprisingly revealing - Amazon’s All Or Nothing, about the Mourinho era at Tottenham Hotspurs, and Netflix’s Sunderland ‘Til I Die, a heartbreaking look at the inner turmoil of a great club in freefall, are two of the best.

Stemming from the UK’s life-governing passion for football but taking an altogether more personal approach is Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In. England’s greatest ever manager, Ferguson retired from the role at Manchester United in 2013, after a 37 year reign that oversaw the emergence of the club as a global football giant; in his wake were 38 trophies, including 13 Premier League titles, five FA Cups, and two UEFA Champions League titles.

In 2018, he collapsed at home, and was found to have five blood clots on his brain, a condition that ends the life of about 80% of sufferers. He would regain consciousness and ultimately recover, but Alex Ferguson was a changed man. He realised how much he cherished his past; not only the incredible football legacy he forged, but his working class parents, Scottish seaside upbringing and the origins of his core values.

The title sounds a bit rah-rah sporty, but Never Give In is, in fact, a very emotional story steeped in the universal themes of family, memory and destiny. Directed by son Jason, who was so moved by his father’s hospital melancholy that he initiated the production, the film is a portrait of not only the great manager’s glory days (his hatrick on debut for his local team, Rangers FC; the 1999 UEFA Champions League final against Bayern Munich, believed to be one of the greatest football wins in the sport’s history); it also about an old man taking stock of a life well lived.

Much of the footage is archival, as is to be expected; this was the United of Cantona, Beckham, Schmeichel - some of the most photographed sportsmen in history - and the change room and onfield action is seamlessly woven into the narrative. However, it is the to-camera interviews - with wife, Cathy; sons Mark and Jason; those he mentored, like Gordon Strachcan and Ryan Giggs; and, of course, the man himself - that sets it apart from other recent real-world accounts of top tier world football. 

Never Give In is less about the day-to-day anxiety of being at the pinnacle of a sport, more about the simple complexities of a man that helped him stay there for four decades.

THE END OF THE STORM

Featuring: Jürgen Klopp, Sir Kenny Dalglish, Jordan Henderson, Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker.
Writer/Director: James Erskine.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

In the English Premier League, you need to be able to pivot on both feet, to be able to exhibit sturdy control and razzle dazzle in equal measure. Which is as good a way as any of describing The End of the Storm, documentarian James Erskine’s part-hagiography/part-rousing sports narrative charting Liverpool Football Club’s record-breaking 2020 dominance, both athletically and commercially.

In this oh-so-authorised account of the Merseyside super-squad’s first title in 30 years, Erskine and his leading man, wünder-manager Jürgen Klopp, riff on the inherent emotion in taking on the challenge of EPL glory for a club like LFC. The German coach, who came to Liverpool after Bundesliga success and a stint at Tottenham Hotspurs, states that the club’s iconic chant ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ mirrors his own philosophies on life, stemming from a childhood steeped in family values and deep friendships. 

The ‘life mentor’ role that is a crucial part of any good manager’s duties is certainly touched upon, as in when Klopp espouses such team spirit-building mantras as, ‘You’ll only feel free in life if you feel protected’. But Erskine pulls up shy of taking the camera into the dressing rooms and boardrooms to capture real drama (as was so compellingly chronicled in the masterful Netflix docu-series, Sunderland ‘Til I Die), instead ensuring that the mood is kept buoyant and in line with the giddy thrill that only Cup winners are afforded.

There is an unsubtle subtext of ‘legacy’ in Erskine’s take on football history-making, notably of the patriarchal kind. Klopp imagines what it would have meant to him had his father been alive to see his achievements, while profiles of fans from all over the world draw clear lines between traditional father figures and the bond with their children that being a Liverpool supporter has enabled. These sequences, some shot as far afield as Kolkata, Detroit and Auckland, walk both sides of a fine line between capturing joyful fan adoration and catering to the commercial realities of a global football franchise.

Undoubtedly the most compelling passage of The End of the Storm is how the organisation confronted the unprecedented shutdown of the global football season as COVID-19 took hold. At the time of the postponement of all EPL fixtures, Liverpool were soaring clear at the top of the ladder by as much as 25 points - mathematically, still able to be run down, but in all reality very clearly champions. However, the very real possibility existed that the 2020 season would be abandoned and the three-decade wait for domestic football glory would be denied to players and fans.

The film builds to a crescendo that plays like an all-American, aspirational sports melodrama, but given the emotional (and commercial) stakes when beloved mega-brands like Liverpool Football Club are in play, and the grand achievements that Klopp and his side accomplished, such excess seems entirely appropriate.

The football action is, of course, superbly captured. Songstress Lana Del Rey contributes an appropriately production-rich reworking of 'You'll Never Walk Alone', underpinning the film's ambitions to embolden both the club mythology and brand power. 

(Ed: As a Derby County supporter, whose team is battling League One relegation as I type, The End of the Storm will be as happy an account of English football as I’ll see this year).