In 2020, documentary films about Juan Manuel Fangio and William Vilas, paved the way for the docuseries about Argentine heroes of the sport. “Fangio: the man who tamed the machines” and “Vilas: you will be what you should be or you will be nothing” -both from Netflix- opened the game for the arrival, much more ambitious, of fictional series streaming.
“Apache: the life of Carlos Tévez”, was a goal in the audience. AND “Maradona: Blessed dream”, which arrived at the end of last year on Amazon Prime, now awaits the whistle for its continuation.
Netflix had tried in parallel, putting a club intern on its staff, with “Boca Junior Confidencial” (in 4 chapters of 40 minutes), in the style of “The Last Dance”, the documentary series about the successful Chicago Bulls of Michael Jordan; and “Match Day”, about the Barcelona of Lio Messi. And he had to his credit documentaries about Pelé and Schumacher -both from 2021-; F1, where the series “Drive to survive” has just released its fourth season; and also “Neymar: the perfect chaos”, which arrived in January of this year.
Match
The fair pass puts on the play board a second wave of bioseries that arrive with the adjusted strategy: focused on famous personalities from local sports and the world, that come loaded with drama and internals, but without the need to complicate the production with the passage to fiction. Stories told by their protagonists with the backstage of the locker room.
This is how the stories of Diego Simeone, Ronaldo and Carlos Bilardo, to which that of Juan Martín Del Potro will soon be added. All for streaming. Something that does not seem to be a coincidence for two reasons: first, the need of each company to offer a large amount of content and that it be varied. The other: football, tennis and car racing lovers found there the ideal space to learn about and enjoy the biographies of their idols.
Star +, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and HBO Max have already released productions of this type and more will come soon. “In our industry, genres and subgenres have recurring cycles that are accentuated to the extent that a great title reaches a strong impact on the audience,” explains Leonardo Aranguibel, Head of Operations for The Walt Disney Company Latin America.
“We are not riding a wave, we see it from another perspective. We always seek to maintain the connection with our market and with the local culture; we work with stories that attract the attention of relevant figures of each market. For seven years we have been marking the issue of serial biographies, we started with that of Juan Gabriel, produced in 2015. They are not always biopics, sometimes they are specific moments of the career. The key is to bring relevant figures to the public”, adds Aranguibel.
great goals
Amazon Prime Video has the docuseries “Simeone: Live game by game”, a work that reviews, in six episodes, the professional and personal career of the Atlético de Madrid coach. It has testimonials from Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Leo Messi, José Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Luis Suárez, and more. And it reflects, after three decades as a player and coach, the philosophy of “Cholo”. A strategy that goes beyond football and spills into goals for life, learning above all from defeats.
A “cholismo” cultivated in the shadow of “bilardismo”, with its nuances, but undoubtedly inspired by who his coach was: Carlos Salvador Bilado, the champion DT of ’86 who has his own story on HBO Max, “Bilardo, the soccer doctor”, executive produced by Federico D’Elía, Cune Molinero and Alejandro Turner. Turner himself acknowledges that the leading role of the technical director was given because he “is a fascinating person.”
“It is one of the genres that is produced on platforms because they work well. The expectation generated by this series is due to the fact that they are very interesting characters, who do public things in which there is a lot of truth: what they do on the field is real, football has a perfect dramatic structureAristotelian”, develops the former scriptwriter of “CQC” and “Something they will have done”.
“This type of documentary, made with time and work, allows immersion in not so well-known areas: home, family, something from his past and a lot of other ingredients that make it very attractive. It is controversial and that always interested in conflict. Carlos is a great character full of contradictions and particularities”, continues Turner.
Federico D’Elia (yes, the one from “The Simulators”), adds: “If the character hooked you even though you don’t like soccer, it’s because he’s attractive in and of himself. A lot of biographies of this type are being made, some with meaning and others not so much, but telling a moment of his life. In this case, Bilardo goes beyond the sporting line because he achieved the maximum of the discipline with his forms that are not those of the majority. He is exceptional as a human being, a very particular type, and try to uncover your head and understanding why he was so obsessive was our main goal. That’s where he catches, not just the soccer fan.”
Equipment
This genre has long lead times. The play is first built with a process of investigation and monitoring, which is done to the protagonist for a certain time. For the Bilardo series, the production team began working on the investigation a year and a half before, to which was added about four months of filming, and includes interviews with his great rival, Cesar Luis Menottias well as the search for archive material that is the main component of the four episodes that make up the series.
“Platforms require more and you have to have a very big team to respond in content and quality”, adds D’Elía. “Only in archival research we had six people working and, in the filming itself, due to the pandemic, we had to work as limited as possible and not exceed 10 members. We still had a great team.”
In the case of the series Juan Martin del Potro, Star + has been accompanying his physical evolution for two years, showing his struggle to recover his right knee. The story of the man from Tandil was filmed in different cities of Argentina and the United States: “Juan Martín del Potro, el último match point” portrays his dedication to return to the courts, and the desire to achieve it to dedicate it to the memory of his father .
They accompanied him day by day, in his treatments, which is the essence of the series, so that viewers can witness the process that it entails, as well as delve into their family relationships, and the difficulties in achieving the necessary level, both physical and mental for high competition.
“From the beginning we found him very interesting because of his figure and to learn about the process, which is very intriguing both for people who love the sport in all its aspects and for those who are not familiar with it. Whatever happened, we were going to reflect it, I even removed it from him. Nothing was scripted”, explains Aranguibel.
From Disney, owner of Star + and National Geographic content, they have a production plan that includes facing the story of the lives of other athletes, scheduled until 2025, and with the award-winning Juan José Campanella as captain.
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