‘Something was missing…’
While I have pretty much stopped watching football on television all together, I absolutely love a football documentary, particularly if it takes place in the ’90s or early ’00s. This was my football watching heyday. Over the summer holidays I have taken in documentaries on Barry Fry, Neil Warnock and Wimbledon FC. I loved all of them. The Figo Affair isn’t quite as entertaining as any of those listed, but it is an accomplished and engrossing retelling of one of the great sporting betrayals…
Portuguese footballer Luis Figo become the most expensive player in world football when transferring from Barcelona to arch rivals Real Madrid in the summer of 2000. To fully understand the rivalry between Madrid and Barca, one must explore the history of Spain and Catalonia, the intricacies of the presidential system in Spanish football and the sheer amount of money involved at the time. The Figo Affair, from directing team Ben Nicholson and David Tryhorn (the same team that brought us Pele), successfully addresses all of these disparate elements to create something that is a comprehensive document on one of the most controversial transfers in the history of football. If anything, it’s too comprehensive. This story could and should have been told in 90 minutes. That being said, I would actually have liked to have seen more about the aftermath of the transfer, occasionally, we find ourselves down in the weeds of the transfer negotiation itself for too long.
The Figo Affair allows all the main players involved to tell their side of the story. The fact that they all contradict each other is one of the things that makes this documentary so compelling – as are the extensive interviews with Figo himself – a figure who remains enigmatic even all these years later. In short, a good documentary that falls short of greatness.