How do you dramatise “the greatest show on earth”? How do you take a stellar cast from the grandest exhibition of the beautiful game and turn it into cinema when most of the audience already knows the story? How do you convert the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, a confluence of dreams, desires and destinies, into a documentary? The approach, at least for Netflix, is to select a theme through which to filter the familiar and underscore the unknown. In Captains of the World, made by Netflix in collaboration with FIFA+, the chosen theme revolves around the chosen ones, the men in charge of leading their respective countries into battle. The result is a series of six episodes ranging between 41 and 55 minutes, co-directed by Ben and Gab Turner, which sheds new light on recent history by focusing on leadership in football.
How leaders are made
As expected, there is a lot of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in Captains of the World (henceforth Captains, not to be confused with another documentary of the same name released by Netflix in 2022, which captured the build-up to the Qatar World Cup). But the most poignant parts, at least in the first three episodes, have to do with lesser stars.
For starters, Brazil’s Mr Dependable, otherwise known as Thiago Silva. The 39-year-old central defender, who could only take Brazil as far as the quarter-finals, talks at length in Captains about his struggles with tuberculosis early on in his life, which gave him the resilience to stand up to fierce attackers as well as fiercer critics. His brief chat with Mateo Kovacic (from Croatia) at the end of a brutal knockout game that eliminates Brazil feels both normal and rare, a conversation where Silva admits that “they kill you in Brazil” for losing. Silva’s Danish counterpart, Simon Kjaer, recalls his life-saving gesture at Euro 2020 when his teammate Christian Eriksen collapsed on the pitch during a game and had to be revived. US skipper Tyler Adams confronts the embarrassment of being corrected in his pronunciation of Iran during a pre-match press conference while Senegalese talisman Kalidou Koulibaly revisits the golden generation of footballing talent from his native land. All these men speak with a candour and vulnerability that often goes missing in the interviews with far more media-trained personalities like Messi, Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane.
Morocco’s Romain Saiss is powerful and poised in describing his country’s fairytale run to the last four while some of the coaches in the tournament also have their say, with the most interesting being the avuncular authoritarianism of Louis van Gaal, the veteran manager in the Dutch camp. In one of the few disappointments (when it comes to access), Piers Morgan (through archival footage) gets more screen time than anyone from the Spanish or German contingents. Even though Netflix tries to give the impression that certain interviews took place during or immediately after the World Cup, it can be speculated from the absence of Sergio Busquets and Manuel Neuer (as well as from the texture of Messi’s beard!) that much of the commentary that animates the documentary was shot well after the curtain came down in Qatar.
A masterclass in cinematography and editing
While Captains of the World is an enticing prospect for anyone looking to dip their feet into footballing fandom, what does it have for fanatics of the most followed sport on earth? The answer is cinematography and editing, which masterfully manufactures tension out of crunch encounters even though the viewer is likely to be aware of the outcome. Two moments from the on-field action stand out in this regard. First is the pall of silence that descends on Captains as Messi lines up his iconic piledriver against Mexico, only to be punctured by the delirious celebrations that are unleashed once the shot finds its intended target. The second is another moment involving another Argentine, as a single beat of a drum resonates to mark an incredible save from Emiliano Martinez in the dying embers of the final against France.
Some of the editing is cheeky, too. Such as when a Portuguese commentator hails Ronaldo as the “father of Portugal” and the camera cuts to a mural of… Messi! The montage format and quick transitions allow parallel narratives to thrive, with sub-plots such as the friendship between Kane and Hugo Lloris (in relation to the England-France quarter-final) and a bagful of upsets in the group stages blending without dissolving. Netflix’s job is made somewhat easier by the Homeric overtones of Peter Drury, with large chunks of his on-air commentary packaged into each episode, something made evident in the trailer itself.
Sidestepping the tough questions
Nobody in their right mind would expect Netflix to quiz the various captains (and coaches) about their politics in such a documentary. At the same time, it is not unreasonable to think that Netflix could have pushed the envelope and questioned the leaders about what it meant to play in a competition that continues to be cloaked in controversy, from accusations of bribery in Qatar becoming hosts to claims of human rights violations in the construction of stadiums to the reported persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals and communities in Qatar. The closest any of the interviewees comes to addressing any of these issues is Kjaer, thanks to Denmark’s own subtle form of protest at the World Cup.
Then again, modern football is an inseparable part of an industrial complex where every word construed as remotely political can have consequences. Which is why one can understand Netflix’s reluctance. There is, however, no excuse for not being edgier on strictly footballing questions. Ronaldo is never asked if his quest for the World Cup is over. Kane is never asked if his penalty miss against France will haunt him for the next four years. Mbappe is never asked if he would have traded his hat-trick in the final for a winner’s medal (he probably would have). Most importantly, Messi is never asked what went through his head when Argentina were staring into the abyss against Mexico and it required an explosion of his exceptional talent to bail them out.
Notwithstanding these misses, Captains remains eminently watchable. Not least because its finale, titled “The Greatest”, is about as moving an ode to Messi as anything going viral in the wake of Argentina’s World Cup triumph. Even though Messi provides characteristically anodyne explanations to several momentous junctures of the World Cup final, Captains is able to stitch together sequences that evoke the unstinting admiration that Messi commands from his teammates, his coach, the commentators and, of course, his legions of fans. In doing so, Captains provides an enduring example of leadership. The kind that walks the walk more than it talks the talk, the kind that observes and anticipates more than it orders or reflects. The kind that combines passion with purpose by concentrating protagonism but distributing power. The kind that makes the crowning glory of an individual and his team feel like a victory for the world.
