Stream It Or Skip It: ‘LALIGA: All Access’ on Netflix, a New Sports Docuseries Dedicated To Spanish Club Soccer

Netflix has gone hard in on all-access sports documentaries lately, with Drive To Survive-style series on tennis, golf, cycling and more. Now, it’s Spanish club soccer’s turn. LALIGA: All Access, an eight-episode series, follows the 2023-24 season from Spain’s top tier of soccer, offering a view of clubs beyond just Madrid and Barcelona.

LALIGA: ALL ACCESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A high-intensity montage of footballers, coaches and commentators talking very seriously about the pressures of the game set to dramatic music. It’s big-time sports, and it wants you to know!

The Gist: There’s a lot of ground to cover here, with LALIGA: All Access working to offer glimpses at each of the twenty teams in Spain’s top flight of soccer. Like similar as-it-happened sports docuseries, there’s a mixture of reality-TV style footage, context-giving interviews, game footage, score and standings updates; the feeling is meant to be that of a season-long recap.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As alluded to up top, this is yet another entry in Netflix’s ongoing (and largely-successful) campaign to make a Drive To Survive for every sport possible. There’s been tennis (Break Point), golf (Full Swing), cycling (Tour de France: Unchained) and more. LALIGA: All Access isn’t a perfect clone of those, but it’s very much in the same vein–an as-it-happened retrospective of the season that just was, with an eye toward opening a sport toward new viewers.

Our Take: Spanish club soccer is some of the world’s best, and features some of the biggest stars in the sport. Still, for general American audiences, knowledge of La Liga doesn’t run nearly as deep as it does for the English Premier League; while bars in Tulsa or Louisville might find Aston Villa or Wolverhampton fans, few Americans are looking into Spanish soccer beyond Real Madrid or Barcelona.

That’s a shame, and it’s also an opportunity–one that Netflix is surely hoping to seize on with LALIGA: All Access, a new documentary series that hopes to show the depth and breadth of the league beyond its two marquee clubs. The eight-episode series jumps from club to club, covering storylines from a handful of the league’s twenty clubs in each 45-minute episode. The format should be familiar to fans of Netflix’s other as-they-happened sports documentaries, a burgeoning category led by Drive To Survive, which opened scores of new American viewers to Formula One racing. It’s got the same mix of interviews, game highlights and off-the-pitch reality-television-ish footage.

Twenty drivers competing in the same race each week is one thing, though; twenty clubs competing in ten different matches each week is a bit taller of a task, and LALIGA: All Access feels a bit scattered for the effort. It’s admirable that they’ve chosen to feature teams like Sevilla and Atletico Madrid rather than just celebrating the two biggest-name clubs (although reports are that Real Madrid may have resisted giving much access anyway.) There’s only so much screen-time to go around. Viewers used to falling in love with a single club–whether it’s Sunderland (from Sunderland ‘Til I Die) or Wrexham (from Welcome To Wrexham)–may struggle to find a club to latch on to here.

There’s also a bit of remove in the personalities; the show’s interviews are largely dubbed into English. This is understandable, given the desire to market to English-speaking audiences, but the dubbed translations come off stilted and dry–surely there is personality here, but it’s getting lost in translation.

Despite these faults, LALIGA: All Access is a fun watch for a hardcore football fan. If you’ve bristled at shows that neglect the depth of European leagues in favor of the handful of international mega-brands, it’s a delight to see stadiums other than Camp Nou and Bernabéu, rivalries other than El Clásico. If you’re hungry for soccer after the Euros ended and can’t wait for the Olympics to start, this show will fill you up.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After a tough loss to Barcelona, Sevilla sacks manager Jose Luis Mendilibar, hoping to salvage their season before it’s too late. Meanwhile, the Madrid Derby goes to Atlético Madrid, behind two goals from Alvaro Morata against his former club. Finally, there’s a teaser for El Clásico, showing its reach for viewers from Norway to Tokyo. It’s a lot at once!

Sleeper Star: The way the show jumps from club to club, there’s bound to be a number of sleeper stars throughout the season. In the first episode, though, Atlético Madrid’s forward Memphis Depay (known by the mononym Memphis) and striker Álvaro Morata steal the show.

Most Pilot-y Line: “In recent decades, the reaction, not only at Sevilla, has been to fire the coach,” Sevilla’s director of sports Victor Orta observes dryly as he discusses the firing of coach Mendilibar, “and I’m not going to be the one who changes that.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. If you’re a hardcore football fan, then you’ll find a lot to enjoy in LALIGA: All Access. For the casual fan, though, it’s not enough to crack through the increasingly-crowded marketplace of sports-season documentaries.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.