FC Bayern documentary on Amazon: treacherous closeness – media

Sometimes, says Oliver Kahn in the first few minutes of the documentary “FC Bayern – Behind the Legend”, the football god is “a sadist”. The CEO of FC Bayern is thinking of lost Champions League finals of the club, the corresponding images run in the documentary to Kahn’s words. 1: 2 in added time in 1999 against Manchester United. The defeat on penalties against Chelsea in the Dahoam 2013 final. Moments that are burned into the memory of every football fan. But sometimes the football docu god is also a sadist.

The football docu god seems to be content with smoothly polished sham seams, and he can’t get enough of that. That was already the case in the documentaries about Manchester City (“All or Nothing”) or Borussia Dortmund (“Inside Borussia Dortmund”), and it is now repeated in this film about the German record champions; all three series were produced for Amazon Prime.

The directors Simon Verhoeven and Nepomuk V. Fischer sometimes get intoxicated in their long-term observation of the Munich people at how close they come to Bavaria. The camera then follows defender David Alaba on his way across the club’s premises, it shows Oliver Kahn stroking a goal post, it films in the throat of goalkeeper Manuel Neuer during the corona test. Or she accompanies Kahn and others from the management level into noticeably tidy offices, where they are then allowed to speak remarkably well-ordered sentences that are immediately forgotten in view of the next recordings.

This closeness is not bad at first, even if it clearly comes with a price: It is not seriously critical. But that seems to have been the deal to be allowed to film in places to which no fan or journalist otherwise has access: during the briefing at the board level, during the tactics training before a Champions League game, again and again even after the final whistle in the dressing room or in the middle of a game. In addition, several players received the camera team at home, Robert Lewandowski even on the evening on which he was voted world footballer. But this closeness alone doesn’t tell you anything. Occasionally it is even distracting.

As soon as it gets exciting, the directors digress

Verhoeven and Fischer accompany the club in an unusual phase. On the one hand, they are in the most successful months in the club’s history, in the Champions League triumph in 2020 in Lisbon, in the success at the Club World Cup in spring 2021 in Doha. On the other hand, they follow FC Bayern in unusually troubled times, when coach Hansi Flick and sports director Hasan Salihamidzic lack the common basis for further work at some point. The two directors come astonishingly close to success and conflict, but as soon as it gets exciting, they digress.

Then they follow players on their way into the cold chamber. Or the protagonists talk for minutes about well-known things, about the tears of Joshua Kimmich, who was incredibly ambitious at a young age, about the fact that the long-time talking Thomas Müller can be incredibly funny, but also incredibly annoying. Or that the club was only able to celebrate all its successes because it was realigned in the 1970s by a certain Uli Hoeneß (have you heard of it?). Often the story then jumps too much between the topics, it gets confused. And so the series robs itself of its own strength.

Verhoeven and Fischer also capture many of these moments, which tell the big story on a small scale. When Hansi Flick struggles with words and composure in the dressing room when he announces to the players that he is going to quit (and Salihamidzic, his tie loosely tied around his neck, pulls a pout). Or when Kimmich, Lewandowski and Leroy Sané talk about why it was so difficult after a victory (Lewandowski sometimes calls for more “pick, pick”). Uli Hoeneß watches this dialogue on the tablet, he says: “Nice scene.” So simple, so free from pathos and opulence. And yet the viewer suddenly comes really close to the club and its protagonists.

A soccer game, it is said, lasts 90 minutes. A good soccer documentary doesn’t necessarily need more.

“FC Bayern – Behind the Legend”, Amazon Prime Video, six episodes.