If you love football or not never mind, if you like British series with fast stories trying to get straight to the point, this one will definitely be for you.

If instead, like me, you love football and you miss it, you can partially fill this emptiness by watching it and admiring the historical reconstruction of a sport that at the time included 2-2-6 among its play systems, almost inconceivable to us.

In the late 1800's, created by Julian Fellowes, creator of Downtown Abbey, it is composed of six episodes lasting about 45 minutes each that speak about the birth of English professional football, but not only that, football seems to be just an outline of a very complicated historical period, especially in terms of the working class lifestyle.

On the one hand, the bourgeoisie and the good life are compared, on the other hand, those who earned almost nothing, forced to suffer abuse to keep a job that barely made it through the month.

Football was an outlet for those people and was a kind of revenge against those who were born into wealth and could decide the fate of the country and the sport itself.

The star is Fergus Suter, a real-life footballer, considered by many to be the first professional of all time, the antagonist is Arthur Kinnaird, also a former footballer who lived at the time, who was also the British headmaster of the Football Association.

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The two will initially clash on and off the field to reach the FA Cup, still today the coveted competition of the English championship.

*Slowly their relationship will change radically until they reach mutual esteem. Conflicts of interest will not be lacking, the team of Old Etonians, captained by Arthur, was formed by the same members of the football federation, which will try to put a spoke in the wheels of Fergus and his Darwen FC.

Arthur and his friend Jimmy Love came from Scotland to help the little proletarian team win. The two are rewarded by the owner of the textile factory where they work to play on his team, which at the time was strictly forbidden by football regulations, this will attract the dislikes of rich rivals.

Fergus because of stormy personal issues will change teams to receive more money, will join the Blackburn, where the president is trying to form a selection of the best players around to achieve victory.

His purchase will turn some of the locals against rival fans and bosses, this will be the pretext for the league to exclude his current and former team from the competition, once they get to the crux of the matter it will be clear and an amateur team will win the cup for the first and last time in history to the present day.

Among historical inaccuracies, especially regarding the names of the teams involved, and quite shocking similarities, just look at how the actor Kevin Guthrie is really very similar to Suter the Shooter, the episodes flow quickly and deal with various issues of the different personal relationships of the characters involved, dedicating to football and its games a very marginal and contained part, without ever exaggerating and reconstructing in an almost excellent way the environments and customs of the time.

I liked it a lot, I enjoyed it all in one day, I've always loved the English series, well done and that don't get lost in frills with useless scenes to fill the minute or to reach a predetermined number of episodes.

Beautiful characters and settings, with attention to detail and, above all, able to convey real emotions and make you reflect on past events that, although more than a century has passed, reflect in part the current events.

Do players of any sport deserve to be paid for their full-time efforts to give themselves and their fans unique emotions or should they work like everyone else and in the time available they should train and play at low levels to benefit the well-off and their plenty of free time available?

These are questions that I asked myself at the end of the vision and to which I do not find it easy at all to give a definitive answer.

Thanks for reading, a hug and see you soon!

Soccer / tvseries

The english game

The english game

The english game