Stand or Fall: The Remarkable Rise of Brighton & Hove Albion, the exclusive official documentary of Brighton and Hove Albion Football club, is a love story 25 years in the making.
Told by the fans who fought to keep the club alive, this documentary charts Brighton’s ascent from the brink of extinction to a place at the Premier League’s top table, and to a first ever season in Europe.
Passion and belief have seen Brighton fans win a David and Goliath battle with no parallel in the history of the beautiful game. A draw at Hereford in May 1997 saved the Albion from expulsion from the Football League. Twenty-five years, later, almost to the day, they took to the field in a brand new stadium and smashed mighty Manchester United by four goals to nil.
Fans from every walk of life - from superstar DJs (FatBoy Slim) to funeral directors, chartered accountants to anarchist performance poets (Attila the Stockbroker) – came together to overcome every barrier set before them. They fought pantomime villain owners, local planners and national government bureaucrats, survived a move to a temporary home four motorways away and battled the elements in a council athletics stadium. And they survived to go from the bottom to the top, from the old Fourth Division to the Premier League.
Triumph and tragedy has underscored the Brighton story. The very real bond between club and community was proved in a terrible way. In August 2015 a jet fighter crashed onto the A23, killing 11 people, two of them connected with the club. The Shoreham air disaster was an horrific event which saw the club thrust into the heart of the Brighton community. The parents of both boys who died that day tell their story, and of the strength they draw from the club’s support, then and now.
Brighton and Hove Albion are unique. The club haven’t just torn up the form book, they have rewritten it, in the process gaining new fans around the world. They regularly humble clubs with far bigger budgets, always playing attractive football thanks largely to the vision of their billionaire chairman Tony Bloom, a lifelong fan. Bloom, a former professional poker player, has amassed more data on football and footballers than anyone on the planet. And he uses that data to source players and staff who are the envy of everyone in the game. This season he sold one player to Chelsea for over £100 million - more than it cost him to build Brighton’s new stadium. Two years previously he bought that player for £4 million...
Manager Roberto de Zerbi has already been named by Pep Guardiola as his likely successor at European Champions Manchester City. His team continue to humble bigger sides in this country and across Europe.
Stand or Fall: The Remarkable Rise of Brighton & Hove Albion is more than a film about a football club or even football in general. It is a celebration of the human spirit, of what people can do when something they truly care about is threatened. It is a love story for our times.