The world of football is also starting to slowly take over various streaming services.
Amazon has already produced a number of thrilling ‘All or Us’ documentaries – delving into the inside story of how Premier League clubs like Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City operate.
The prospect of dramatizing football into thrilling documentaries has turned out to be a pretty solid idea.
Many football fans often hate watching fictional movies about the beautiful game, but the prospect of a documentary or non-fictional tale attracts a lot of eyes.
Netflix has also embraced this by producing a number of football documentaries in the past.
The Sunderland: Till I Die series gave a glaring, endearing look into the lives of some of the club’s biggest supporters.
Moreover, there was also a compelling series created around Neymar as well as one around Juventus – when Cristiano Ronaldo still used to play for them.
However, the famous streaming giants have done something rather surprising in the latest season of their hit series ‘You’ that has left many confused.
You is a psychological thriller series based on the books by writer Caroline Kepnes. It follows the story of Joe Goldberg, a bookstore manager who starts stalking a girl before descending to acting like a murderous psychopath.
Despite its relatively unnerving nature, You has proven to be extremely popular on Netflix over the last few years.
It ranks among the most-watched original shows produced by the platform and has been renewed for more seasons due to the increase in its popularity.
Recently, the fourth season of You was released on February 9. Only five episodes were released, with the remaining five being released as a ‘Part II’ in March. In this latest series, the main character, Joe, has travelled to England from the USA.
In doing so, he is now left to blend in with the English culture while trying to cover the secrets of his past.
The season has received decent critical acclaim and has impressed its fans too. However, some football die-hards have been left rather stunned by one weird change made by the show.
In one of its episodes, Joe commits a murder and proceeds to dismember the person to cover things up.
Suddenly, he starts watching a football game between ‘Putnam’ and ‘Fillerton’.
These are not even real teams. There is no record of either of these two sides being registered in England across any divisions.
It’s quite clear that they were totally made up by the showrunners just for this episode itself.
It’s just another way of trying to get Joe to get more accustomed to British culture and fall in love with their football (or soccer, as he calls it!).
The game he watches on his mobile is a ‘stock football match’, which is often used in such instances.
Some supporters are understandably confused over how Netflix couldn’t just use the real name of two English teams for this purpose. They definitely have the finances for it and many clubs would love to have themselves promoted on such a popular show.
The Apple TV-produced show ‘Ted Lasso’ can serve as an ideal example of this. Even though the characters and team AFC Richmond are all fictional, the show has references to teams like Man City, Crystal Palace, and West Ham United and shows the team playing in the FA Cup as well!
Maybe the showrunners of ‘You’ tried to create a bit of their own fandom for their newly-created teams, but football fans are unlikely to fall in love with their half-baked effort.
