THE MAINE MEN, KEEGAN'S REVOLUTION

TITLE           The Maine Men, Keegan's revolution
PUBLISHER       Fremantle Media Home Entertainment (2001)
                www.fremantlemedia.com
Producer:       Carl Morris.
Editor:         Julian Coleman.
Running time:   70 minutes approx.
Price:          £14,99

"The Maine Men, Keegan's revolution" is the story about Manchester City from the moment Kevin Keegan was installed as manager. My first thought was that this must be wrong, I got the tape on November 29th 2001, City had just been hurled out of the Worthington League Cup by Blackburn, and was currently number 8 in Division 1. Surely the revolution part was misleading or at least a bit premature.

The tape lasted 70 minutes and started off with the interview on the day Keegan accepted the City job. The manager was one of the main characters throughout the tape giving his view on each game on the revolution path. 18 games were covered with little more than the goals being showed. Still there were many great moments, in particular Eyal Berkovic and Ali Benarbias debuts, and outstanding play.

Some of the players gave their opinions especially "Psycho" and "the Goat". Shaun Goater was showing some great finishing in all of the games. A few people from the media and fan base was put in front of the camera and gave their "view of the moment". None of the commentary added really valuable information to the things happening on the pitch, but they were all polite and witty, just enough to get accepted by the suites I guess.

I wondered if this was to be the whole story about Keegan's revolution. If so it was not much to write about, and even less to make a video of. What it should really be called was "the beginning of a revolution", then it would have made some sense at least.

The good thing about this video is that it is a summary of all the goals (for and against) from the 18 games first games of the 2001/02 season. But when the season review gets out many of them will be in there as well, so I recommend that you get that one instead. But who knows, they might decide to split the review into separate parts, so that you get a trilogy out of this season.

But then the package should probably have said that in beforehand. But there were so many things left out that I wondered why someone would bother to make such a video - if it was not only to make a quick buck on fanatically loyal supporters aiming to extend their (way to many) meters of City-gadgets in their bookshelf. With Christmas coming up I suspect this to be close to the truth.

The change of formation to a defensive line-up with three fullbacks was not touched at all. We were leaking goals and none was even asking what the formation was - strange!

And with the magic of Eyal Berkovic and Ali Benarbia coming to the club you could at least try to explain their backgrounds, past experiences and hard times. It was mentioned that Benarbia was the previous French player of the year, and in fact Benarbia could have played for France, but after being overlooked for many years he decided to put on the Algerian jersey towards the end of his career. This was not covered at all.

Also; Berkovic is an Israeli and with an Israeli and a Algerian joining City at the same time as the twin towers crashed down in N.Y. and bombes were flying in Afghanistan, it would be inspiring to see that these two were in fact genuine professional footballers that could cooperate on a football field, even though I guess their background must be somewhat different. But then again they might both be Catholics for all that I know….

The timeframe of this video spans 5 interesting months in many ways. Sadly it has become a plain marketing-fashion and transparent story with the only hunch of a punch line coming well into injury time: "Sometimes we are good and sometimes we are not so good. But when we are good, at least we are much better than we used to be. And when we are bad, we are just as bad as we always used to be. So that's got to be an improvement - doesn't it?"

Well we just have to wait and see coz the revolution has just begun.