FC Barcelona: A New Era portrays the club’s route to resurgence

Football fans were intrigued when it was announced that Amazon Prime would release a documentary about one of the most turbulent periods of time in FC Barcelona's history. The documentary, however, focuses more on the resurgence of Barcelona rather than the chaos.

FC Barcelona: A New Era was released on Amazon Prime Video and is divided into five parts. It covers the period starting from Ernesto Valverde's sacking to the beginning of the 2022/23 season under Xavi.

The documentary begins with the highlights from the glory days of Barcelona and then shows the club's recent slump – demonstrating the contrast between what Barcelona used to be and the current state of the club.

Within the first two episodes, the documentary quickly recaps events such as the 8-2 loss to FC Bayern Munich, Bartomeu's resignation, departure of Suarez and Messi from the club, and the sacking of Ronald Koeman.

However, these events are reviewed without much depth, with no new revelations and didn't include any behind-the-scenes footage from of these key events. Instead, we get to see the players and managers share their experiences and how they felt during this rough patch.

On top of that, the documentary does not cover many topics such as the reason behind Bartomeu's resignation, the club's financial turmoil or the board's attempt to defer player's wages.

Instead, the focus of the documentary was more on what happened on the pitch and the club's fight to steer clear of disaster. Most of the exclusive footage in the documentary involves Xavi and his management of the team. It dives deep into what changes he brought to the team and the tactics he implemented. 

We can see Xavi introducing a "challenge" system where he challenges the team before the match to complete certain tasks during the game to get rewarded. According to Xavi, this was done to make sure that "players give 200% from the very start".

Xavi is also seen playing a key role in the contract extension of Ousmane Dembélé. Despite the back and forth between the player's agent and the club, Dembélé eventually renewed his contract. 

Alongside Xavi's management, the documentary also focused on the three youngsters of Barcelona – Pedri, Gavi and Ansu Fati. Viewers will get to know more about their childhood, their journey of breaking into the first team, how they overcome challenges and continue to do so in their careers. 

The documentary focused mainly on the positive changes that were brought to the club. Extra screen time was given to Barcelona's El Clasico win over Real Madrid and the documentary tries to get the message across to the fans that Barcelona can still compete at the very top.

The documentary feels like an attempt to regain the fans' trust who have been frustrated with the club's condition and the string of poor results that have followed. It shows that the club is in the right direction despite the recent struggles and that they are doing everything they can to achieve success.

FC Barcelona: A New Era may fall short of the expectations of many viewers but it can still be a great watch for Barcelona fans, especially for those who couldn't manage to keep up with all the developments that took place in the club in the past few years.

Tamjidul Hoque loves talking about football and watching anime. You can contact him at tamjidulh@gmail.com