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All or Nothing: Juventus (2021) – Series Review

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime Video

All or Nothing, a “fly-on-the-wall” series that has covered various sports like Rugby, Ice Hockey, American Football, and Soccer (just) Football, is back with its’ next installment covering Italian Football Club Juventus’ 2020-21 footballing season.

Many football teams have had documentaries made on them, notable clubs include, Borussia Dortmund, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspurs, Boca Juniors, the Brazilian National Football Team which have all lasted one season. There are only two football documentaries that come to my mind spanning two seasons, namely Netflix’s “Sunderland ‘Til I Die” on English Football Club Sunderland A.F.C. and Amazon Prime’s “Takes us Home: Leads United” on English Football Club Leeds United. Both of these series capture clubs that have fallen from grace and are vying to play in the “Top Echelon” of the English Football System, albeit with differing fates but satisfying to watch nonetheless.

But the case with Juventus is a bit different, as Juve already had a 6-episode documentary Series called “First Team: Juventus” that was released on Netflix back in 2018 covering the 2017-18 Football Season. I could not help but compare both series given that only two “footballing” seasons have elapsed between both these documentaries. There are a lot of similarities between both these series, like their Goalkeeper “Gianluigi Buffon“ leaves the club at the end of both the seasons, few players on the team are the same. There are a few differences as well, while the interviews with the players are in Italian in both the series, the narration in “First Team: Juventus” was in English while in “All or Nothing: Juventus” was in Italian making non-Italian viewers focus on the subtitles all the time.

I would say that as a standalone series “All or Nothing: Juventus” is more watchable than the likes of “All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur”, “All or Nothing: Brazil National Football Team” and “Boca Juniors Confidential”. Having said that I don’t see the relevance of having another series made on them in such a short time. In the series, there was a reference to the breakaway “European Super League”, of which Juventus was a part of, a proposed football competition comprising of 12 founding member clubs (with a proposed increase) across England, Spain, and Italy. In the series, for the breakaway league, one of the reasons sighted was money and the impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. If gaining more fans (which would lead to more revenues) is the reason why even this series was commissioned, then it is highly debatable why such a thing would happen given that “First Team: Juventus” had a similar tone and what audience are Juve trying to appeal to which was not already done by the Netflix series?

If you have not seen “First Team: Juventus” you can give this a go otherwise you can skip it unless you are a die-hard Football Fan.

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