6’1″ and 229 pounds, Adebayo Akinfenwa was a beast of a striker, able to bench press twice his considerable weight. On a soccer scale, it would be like seeing Mean Joe Green or the Refrigerator (William Perry) run at you. Like, where can you hide? And yet, until this documentary, I had never heard of Bayo Akinfenwa because he’d only had stints with lower league teams. So my first reaction was, why make a documentary around this player?
And that’s what makes this fly on the wall film so interesting. Facing the end of his playing career at age 40, and having 5 kids, he needed to figure out his next steps. Always a well-liked player, the film follows him as he works to leverage his social media presence and popularity into new opportunities. If you want to see how the influencer industry works and what consultants advise, this is the film for you.
The Story
We learn about Bayo and his brothers Dele and Yemi Akinfenwa. They are his managers, planning staff, supporters, and entourage. The 3 muscle-bound brothers are a Beast Mode On branding machine, leveraging Bayo’s rizz personality and straight forward talk.
The film is broken into several parts, starting with his family history and his climb through football. Always considered “too big” for soccer, he took chances such as becoming the first Black footballer in Lithuania and enduring horrible racist chants. He made it back to England football, but then broke his leg. Throughout, his dedication to working out and his popularity sustained him and kept him employed. He even earned an era card in the EA sports FIFA game as the strongest player award.
The rest of the film is about the various hustles he tries to build a post-playing career. He seeks out other athletes who call themselves Beast. He tries to MC wrestling. He tries boxing. He tries being a wrestler. At 40, he finally retires at Wycombe Wanderers.
In Conclusion
The soccer consists of nice clips of Bayo’s goal scoring throughout his career.
Watching Bayo meet with his agent at Wasserman and get his head scanned at EA are interesting insider scenes.
I think anyone interested in being an influencer — which seems to be the career aspirations of half the population — would benefit from watching this film, even though it was filmed in 2022. It may also give ideas to other footballers facing the end of their playing careers. To ultimately succeed though, you have to have a lot of aura points and delulu. People with less than 200 followers need not watch this documentary.
Note: I just read a NYTimes article on internet slang and threw in a few such words. Am I sigma, or am I skibidi toilet? 😂🚽
7 Soccer Movie Mom Rating = 7
Resources:
- Released: 2022-10-26 (Wycombe Wanderers)
- 1 hour 27 mins
- I watched this on Amazon Prime
- IMDB
- Directors: Julian Alexander Oliver , Najia Khaan
- Stars: Adebayo Akinfenwa
- Watch the Trailer
- Beast Mode On youtube channel
