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Team 33 | "Man City Amazon series just glossy brand building" - Michael Calvin on new book and football media trends

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98FM

05:33 22 Aug 2018


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This week, our main guest on Team 33 was the excellent football writer Michael Calvin who has released a new book called State Of Play: Under The Skin of the Modern Game.

A wide-ranging work, it spans from everything from concussion-related dementia in football to the increasingly fractious relationships between the media and players.

That was a point - along with his views of The Players Tribune model -  I discussed with Michael in our interview and he brought up the case of the Manchester City documentary series All Or Nothing which has been appeared to mixed reviews on Amazon Prime. 

You can listen to the full chat with Michael Calvin on the podcast player or on iTunes:

Team 33 | "Man City Amazon series just glossy brand building" - Michael Calvin on new book and football media trends

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

Commenting on the rise of The Players Tribune model as the start of the "artificiality of communication", Calvin then turned to the Man City series: "You only have to look at the Manchester City Amazon series which is essentially glossy brand building in the name of fly-on-the-wall journalism.

"To be honest, I saw the first episode of that and it looked like almost an advert for the merchandising section."

Later on Tuesday night's show, Joe Coffey and I were joined by regular Team 33 panelist Killian Woods who has watched the entire documentary series. He reviewed the pros and cons and also gave his view on which players, managers and owners came out of it looking good, bad or somewhere in between including Pep Guardiola, Sergio Aguero... and Fabian Delph: 

Plus, the three of us also chatted about the changing football broadcasting landscape as more games land on Facebook via new entities like Eleven Sports and others: 

Apart from Gary Neville and Arsenal Fan TV founder Robbie Lyle, recent interviews on Team 33 include former Man United cult hero Andrei Kanchelskis, ex-England international Carlton Palmer, former Newcastle and Everton left back Alessandro Pistone, Chelsea legends Bobby Tambling and Paddy Mulligan, Dutch legend Johan Neeskens, ex-England striker Darius Vassell, Liverpool legend David Fairclough, former Ireland midfielder Mark Kinsella, USA captain Eric Lichaj and former Everton forward Tomasz Radzinski. Plus our in-depth chats with Tony CotonPackie BonnerNobby SolanoRon Atkinson and Alan Curbishley are still available on iTunes. You can find them all in one place by subscribing to Team 33 on iTunes.


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