“I don’t coach football players”. Yeah, Jose, we’ve noticed
There is a good chance you’ve been watching a football documentary with lots of Jose Mourinho in it recently. And that would be All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur.
However, that is on Amazon Prime. Over on the other streaming service, there is another Jose doc that is definitely worth your time.
Today, Netflix launched a new doc series called The Playbook: A Coach’s Rules For Life. Each episode sits down with a different sports coach, and asks them their rules for success both in sport and life.
Jose Mourinho is one of the coaches who gets an episode, and he goes full unapologetically Mourinho in it.
Just watch the trailer. All the others are very American, talking about inspiration and hard work. And Jose is like “Nah, I’m not gonna talk about other people.”
“You are not going to teach Ronaldo how to take a free kick,” spouts Jose.
“I don’t coach football players. I coach football teams.”
You don’t say…
The episode covers the bulk of his managerial career, from Porto through to Tottenham Hotspur.
The rest of the series also features some very interesting names. There is tennis coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, who guided Serena Williams to many, many titles and her Olympic gold medal.
Then there’s Jill Ellis, who led the US women’s football team to consecutive World Cup victories in 2015 and 2019, and ‘Doc’ Rivers, the former NBA star who is now coach of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Rounding out the series is Dawn Stanley, the coach of the US national basketball team.
Even if you are not familar with those names, they all have interesting stories to tell and the whole series is worth watching.
It does seem like we are in a golden age of football documentaries on streaming services at the moment. Along with Amazon’s All or Nothing series, there was, of course, the brilliant Sunderland Til I Die on Netflix.
Last month also saw the release of Netflix’s Anelka: Misunderstood, about the life and career of the French star.
