'El Presidente' Review: Armando Bo's satire on 2015 FIFA scandal might be Amazon's breakout foreign show
This review is spoiler-free
Sports may have come to a standstill thanks to the pandemic outbreak, but that hasn't stopped the inflow of gripping sports documentaries and films. 'The Last Dance' (ESPN), 'Shaq Life' (TNT) have been a few that focused on NBA legends and had the audience asking for more.
Joining the list is 'El Presidente', a Spanish comedy sports drama created by Oscar-winning screenwriter Armando Bo. This scintillating eight-part series reveals the 2015 FIFA scandal that rocked the world and resulted in the expulsion of Sepp Blatter and the arrests of big names in the organization.
That such a serious issue is satirized makes 'El Presidente' worth the watch. Even though it is considered a miniseries, the storyline is fun, quick-paced, and concrete. CONMEBOL, the South American Football Confederation can be rightly described as an organization rich in tradition. And from the first episode, it is also safe to term it as complicit.
Things start to go full-tilt south for them when they bring in Sergio Jadue (Andrés Parra), the president of a small Chilean football club, and make him prez of the Association of Professional Football of Chile (ANFP). The opening episode is all about Parra as Jadue. Passionate, but also a man who treats his players like absolute s**t. One of the scenes shows him pledging his car keys as a way to show he would play his players, just so that he could get them to win the First Division game.
The pilot episode quickly establishes much of the main characters. And the story is narrated by Julio Grondona, rightfully called the father of Latin American soccer by Bo. It opens with Grondona's funeral where Jadue is seen paying his last respects to the man he looked up to. Corruption is an everyday affair and the series toggles between the past and the present-day events that see Jadue act as an informant for the FBI. In Karla Souza's Rosarito/Lisa, there's an agent who's been hot on the trail of corruption.
With the choices either being jail or co-operation for a lighter punishment, Jadue in his attempt to be the mole fails the first few times big time even as he ascends the ladder of power one day at a time. What follows are some figures in the bank that Jadue only ever dreamt of. In a way, it was exactly what his wife, Nené (Paulina Gaitán) wanted.
In his wife, Jadue gets the perfect motivator. When he first gets invited to a vote, she pushes him to be a member of the board, a rather important one as opposed to his idea of just being there for the vote. Over the course of the series, we get to witness the multitude of feelings that Jadue goes through. He's torn between cleansing his own sins and also attempting to not rat out the CONMEBOL for their corruption. In the end, the final question is all about Jadue. "And what of him now?'
'El Presidente' is not short of drama. The Nené -Jadue relationship starts off as a loving wife and husband tale and eventually takes the rough roads. And this storyline coupled with Souza's constant pressure on him works wonders for the story. It is perhaps easy to go overboard in praise of the show, but the only flaw, negligible and well-masked by drama is the slow trough it hits at times. With the plot thickening with every chapter, Bo could have perhaps pegged the drama a step back.
It is no doubt an over-the-top satire but cleverly told so as to not seem that way. The CONMEBOL's dirty can of secrets are opened with an opener made of comedy and that's a highlight. There's more to this than just Jadue as the series also shows the mistreatment meted out to soccer players in different countries. All these are fleeting references but are still captured to add more depth to the story.
'El Presidente' just might be one of those breakout foreign dramas to have hit Amazon Prime.
'El Presidente' is streaming now on Amazon Prime.