Captains of the World

Amazing documentary covering the greatest world cup at least of my lifetime, watching since 1998. Qatar hosted it magnificently (people complaining about Qatar are okay with the next hosts) and obviously the documentary has a lot of Messi, he was man of the match in 5 out of 7 matches and was the best player of the tournament.

They could have covered more of 2014 world cup final, and copa america final losses to chile in back to back years, how close Argentina got but didn't win but 2021-2022 they finally won 3 trophies including the World Cup

All in all a great representation of the best world cup ever, won by the greatest player ever.

This documentary is amazing--was a binge. A breathless watch. The behind the scenes footage is so tensioned. MIghty football stars become ordinary, hurt individuals and you can witness how deep their struggle and how hard it is for them to get their wins. It's what I liked the most: the series' focus on the struggle. On dissapointment when they lose. On how hard the work to win and nothing coming as easy as it may seem. You see them rejoice when they score (on your television screen) but in this documentary, on the table is the struggle, and the desolation when they fail. There are so many snippets from behind the scene that make this documentary fascinating--I appreciated those the most. It's not about star footballers here, it's about struggle, tension, dissapointment, team work, excruciating efforts, both physical and mental, to reach a goal.

The close-ups on the players faces!

Of all the documentaries that get made around a single event, this is by far the best one I've seen. Many players and teams are covered, the Welsh national team with that epic pre-tournament speech was amazing; the story of the Iranian national team and how they had to represent a country whose government is tyrannical against their people was heartbreaking. And what can I say about Messi that hasn't been said before? The unequivocal GOAT. People suspect that the tournament was biased but this is because almost everyone outside of France and Portugal was rooting for him to win the cup; this tournament was always going to be about him. He had just come out of a 36 win streak with the national team and won the Continental tournament Copa America the year before. It was an absolute joy to watch him deal with the problem of losing to Saudi Arabia and recovering so amazingly and conquering every peak to win his well deserved World Cup. 10/10.

I'm a bit football fan and I watched almost every match at the World Cup. I understand that they want to make the documentary around Messi because he won the world cup, but they missed out a lot of other important moments in the cup.

We saw two of the best strikers saying goodbye, Lewandowski and Suarez, and there was no mention of them at all.

Especially since Lewandowski scored his first and only goal at a world cup ever, which was a great highlight for him.

They focus a lot on Wales, but left out some other underdog teams. And where was Germany? One of the biggest football nations, and they barely mentioned a word about them.

Also I didn't like how they portrait the Netherlands team. The FIFA made a big mistake by appointing Lahoz as the referee, who missed two hand balls of Messi. But they only focus on Messi being the greatest, while he should have got a red card, and the whole Netherlands team as some kind of bad guy.

I did like how they portrait the story around the Brazil, Denmark and Morocco team.

It was fun to watch as a football fan, but maybe they could have done a little interview with the captain of every country.

I write this review not as a sports fan but as a fan of great stories, this was just amazing from every point of view, and made me fall in love with football in a way I thought wouldn't be possible.

This docuseries is a very well told story about the world cup, explores the different feelings and perspectives of the captains in the teams competing, this, makes it so distinct from the overview sports shows usually rely on, and gives an opportunity to the players to show their values to the world, while we as an audience embrace their struggles as they fight tooth and nail for making it to the definitive instances of the championship. It made possible to look at this sportsmen in their common ground, not only as players, but as human beings, Thiago Silva's and Simon Kjaer's plots were captivating, I was able to experience what's not told and not seen in the pitch, it made me perceive football players very differently from what I thought they were.

The editing in this was flawless, every scene was selected meticulously to fit with the mood and flow of the story, every commentary was on point, and the fact that they used a lot of different narrators from all over the world made it even better. There is a lot of unseen footage and interviews, it is what gives the docuseries it's added value since there are some other productions about this same event.

Would have been interesting to see the perspective of all of the captains and teams, but I know that it was more a technical than a will choice to not show them.