In late-2022, Arsenal were left devastated by the loss of both Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema to long term-ACL injuries. Teammates on the pitch, partners off the pitch, they were forced to begin the long road to recovery together. Now, they are sharing that story with everyone, through Step By Step, an Arsenal Documentary taking us from the start to finish of their journey from the operating table to the football pitch once more.
Injury documentaries are nothing new at Arsenal. Both Rob Holding and Jordan had 15–20-minute videos covering their rehab and recovery for their own ACLs. Gabriel Jesus had his own series last season as he raced to be fit for the title run-in following his World Cup injury (thankfully not ACL related). However, this Step By Step is more. Firstly, obviously, it covers two players journeys rather than one. It is also a 5-part 30-minute video series (we only saw the first 3 parts) going from the moment their worlds collapsed, to the wider ramifications of the rest of their season and their World Cup ambitions, now lost to them. And it’s good. It’s very good.
Earlier this year, Arsenal released ‘Togetherness’, a Women’s Team documentary covering the highs (few) and lows (many) of the previous season. Whilst it portrayed itself as something akin to their ‘All Or Nothing’ venture with Amazon Prime, in truth, it was little more than matchday highlights as narrated by Rachel Yankey, with only a few peaks behind the London Colney Curtain. As fun as it was to watch, it didn’t really bring anything new to the table. The narratives spun we already knew, having ridden that rollercoaster with them, side-by-side.
Step by Step is different. Very little matchday footage is shown, just the moments when ‘it’ happened (Viv’s air swing drew an audible gasp from the audience). The focus is very much on Viv and Beth, with frank interviews about their joint recovery. Clips are shown of their day to day lives at home together, now heavily disrupted by their new circumstance.We see them go through the tortuous repetition of rehab in the gym, forced to soldier on alone whilst the others get to go out and play on the training fields.
Step by Step goes into greater depth with the characters than the surface ‘Togetherness’ provided. Instead of a rapid glaze over, Step by Step takes it time, detailing the physical, but also mental toll of recover on the pair of them. There is also agreater trauma lingering over the pair of them. June Mead’s, Beth’s mother, was into her final months when the pair of them tore their ACLs. Her deteriorating condition is something they both cite as mentally affecting them when their injury happened. Though as Beth says, ‘Sometimes these things happen for a reason’. Her and Viv being removed from football allowed them to spend time in her final moments, a shining positive moment in the darkness of what they both describe as ‘the worst years of their lives’. The series is dedicated in her memory, and whilst June has since passed, her presence is felt throughout through the words of Beth and Viv, as is the pain of her premature departure.
There is a third protagonist of this piece, Gary Lewin, Arsenal Women’s Head of sports medicine and sports science. Gary’s first spell with Arsenal was with the Men’s side but was brought back in 2021 to help support their Women’s time. At the time, it was seen as a bit of coup, a potential cure to Arsenal’s struggles with injuries during the previous seasons under Joe Montemurro. But even a man of his experience and knowledge is left stunned by the sheer frequency of ACL injuries, not just at Arsenal, but in the sport overall. He is a kind, wise head, providing a beacon of hope to the pair of them (although the less said about having dogs in his office, the better). Throughout, Gary is Viv and Beth’s guide, offering them support and advice, often sitting down with them to discuss their recovery and the wider issue of ACL injuries.
ACLs are multifaceted, there is no one direct cause, rather a conglomeration of many, which if enough are aligned at one time, has the potential to cause a tear. And as Gary explains, there is no cure. There is no magic drug, or medical treatment, that will fully eliminate what the documentary describes as an ‘epidemic’. All they can do is mitigate and reduce the likelihood of a potential tear. By episode 3, Viv and Beth sit down with experts in the fields of physiology and medicine, to discuss what are the potential causes for why they, and so manner others, have fallen to this devastating injury. It’s an all-encompassing conversion, covering both the mental and physical loads the pair were carrying prior to their injury. No solution is reached, but that is not the documentary’s intention. Rather, it attempts to be the trigger, to be the start of the conversation of how we fix an injury threatening to undermine the growth of the game.
All of which could easily make it just a sad, depressing introspection into the lives of two star players struggling withdealing with not doing what they love. As Beth says ‘football is her happy place’, and not being to do what she loves is infuriating to her. Yet what truly defines it is not the sadness, but rather the joy. There is a lot to laugh at and enjoy throughout, a bizarre juxtaposition given the nature of the series. Most of that stems from Viv, and the chemistry she shares with Beth. The bickering back and forth as they try to make light of their present situation is heart-warming. What comes across well is Viv’s wit and sarcasm, with the occasional dry comment bringing a smile to everyone’s face. Her line about the chances of playing at the World Cup drew roars of laughter from the audience. But it crucially doesn’t feel out of place. Being stripped of their livelihoods for a year thanks to something they, unfairly, partially blame themselves for, has the potentially to mentally devastate them. Both have gone on record to say they have had dark times throughout to process, but their humour has shown to provide the perfect antidote.
It is of course, not all jokes and laughter, there are also plenty of touching moments as well. When Viv’s knee pops against Lyon, she explains her first thought is not the match, or the World Cup, but the fact she now won’t be able to drive Beth home to spend her last Christmas with her mother. When Laura Wienroither tears her ACL against Wolfsburg, the pair of them invite her to move in with them to help with her recovery, as she is now treading the path they have already walked. It should be noted, Leah’s recovery does not feature, this isn’t her story, but Laura’s plight reminds us of the scale of Arsenal’s ACL devastation (if any reminder was needed). And as Laura states, ‘there’s no-one else I’d want to go through this with’, knowing that despite the hardships ahead, she is in good company. What also comes across well is the togetherness and support from the rest of the squad. Teammates are often seen with them in the gym or swinging by to support them their first run on the anti-gravity machine. Beth’s first straight line running outside, a key milestone in her recovery, is met with rapturous applause from the entireteam.
As well made and emotionally engaging as the piece is though, it is not without with its drawbacks, the primary onebeing the shuffled timeline. Beth and Viv’s injuries occur at different times, so naturally their stages in recovery are mis-aligned. What we then get are violent swings in time that Nolan or Tarantino would be proud of, from November, to February, to December, to May, then back to January. A counter in the corner of the video at least gives you a marker as to where we are in the story, but it can be disorienting and confusing at times. One wonders if it would have been better off portraying the story in more linear fashion, or at least kept the jumps in time to a minimum.
The feeling at the end was that we had not just seen two players recovering from their ACL injuries, but a look into what makes them as a person, and how this injury has impacted that. We get a closer look into their lives than any social media post or photo dump. On the pitch, we see Mead as this bundle of positive energy, whilst Viv as the miserable,serious striker who never celebrates. Yet back home, the dynamic is reversed. It is often Viv who supplies the laughter whilst Beth is more reserved.
In the Q&A afterwards, she explains that her energy comes from what the crowd gives heron matchday, and you can see the effect of that being cut off from her. In ‘All or Nothing’, Arteta spoke of combining ‘Brain and Heart’ before the North London Derby, and that is precisely what we get throughout here. Beth is the emotional Heart of the documentary. Before the injury, she was at the top of her game, before losing everything all at once. Football, the World Cup and then her mother. It took her to her very bottom, and for her, it’s piecing her life back together again and finding that joy in football once more. Viv is the Brains, thinking not just about her injury, but the bigger picture, and how we can fix this. It’s noticeable that when talking with the experts, its often her leading the conversation, talking about the work load she’s suffered since such a young age, and the struggles other women like her will have because of this injury hanging over their heads. The video ends with a look ahead to the final two episodes, when the pair of them finally make their return to the pitch. Of course, we have already seen this moment for ourselves, with Beth coming on to save the day against Aston Villa at Emirates Stadium, and Viv returning at Ashton Gate to help see out the win against Bristol City. Those hosting were keen to point out those episodes where even better than the first three, which bodes well considering the high bar set by what we had just witnessed.
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