Becoming Champions

It is kind of lazily researched. There is a lot of repetition, especially with that fake newspaper that always shows the same headlines. It feels dressed up, which is entirely unnecessary.

This is a documentary about the history of World Cup winners and it's about 9 hours long but in the entire docuseries you see maybe 10 minutes of actual world cup footage. The entire "documentary" consists of interviewing a bunch of people while having photos float in the background. Someone talks about a legendary moment that happened but there is no video of that moment.

Throughout the series we see footage of cities and countries but there is no actual footage of the world cup itself.

The documentary is also badly organized. There is no coherent story and it jumps from place to place, skips a lot of important parts and moments for each team, fast forward most stuff without even mentioning in passing.

Also most of the interview material kept getting recycled over and over. By the time I was in 6th episode I felt like I'm watching the whole thing again because it was showing the same interview bits from previous episodes over and over with no actual footage.

There are so many "dead" parts in this "documentary" where the vid is showing sights of the city/country, or highlights without any reference or meaning, Take the Italy episode. No mention whatsoever of their humiliating loss to North Korea in England 1966. Are you telling me that loss had NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER in how the Italians managed their national team? Germany episode: the 1978 team had more talent than the 74 championship team, what went wrong in Argentina? No mention. England episode: in 1982 Spain, England didn't lose a game. They had a strong team. No mention on how they didn't reach the semi-final. All the Uruguay episode was about how their players never quit and are unique... except by saying that they never quit and are unique time and time again!

On the positive side, there were very few highlights that I cannot find on youtube, so I guess that's a plus.

And how is it that all the "interview" pieces were dominated by media or self-proclaimed historians? Who cares what they think? Why not more from players and coaches and opponents? So much potential in this docuseries, so little satisfaction.

It is worth your time to watch this Netflix Series. In spite of the fact that it will not give you anything more than you already know, it is enjoyable nevertheless.