What do you do when you have a friend who loves football, film and telling stories as much as you do and is also a great cameraman and technician with a journalistic outlook?
You create a YouTube channel with the aim of telling stories that live on the edge of the football world and hide behind the stories that everybody sees play out on the pitch.
And that is how our channel, the Gegen Press Guys was born.
For those who don’t spot the pun or know us, the name is inspired by the tactics of one of our heroes, Jürgen Klopp and his ‘gegenpressing’ which was - like us - a combination of the English language and the German language (and yes, one of us is a Liverpool supporter and the other BVB or Borussia Dortmund to those outside of Germany). We chose to separate the Gegen and the Press to highlight our goal of creating short films that have a substance to them, a point, a narrative and/or a journalistic point of view.
The treatment is quite simple:
Two filmmakers, each with a camera (and some other bits and pieces) go to where the story is, talk to people from behind the camera, (often) take in a game with supporters or others surrounding the actual game, put it together and release on YouTube. Having both spent years working in different parts of the film industry, we are confident in our ability to create a story with a production value above that of a lot of independent football related content on the platform but we both feel excited by how YouTube allows a direct line to an audience which can forgive the slightly rougher edges of fast and furious filmmaking.
How often we are able to do it will depend on various factors. First, we need a story. Secondly, we need the time to film it, although it will likely often only ever be a few days filming. Some times we will have to work on other projects which come our way (such as my film for ARD, The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet). And finally, there is also some expense involved on our part so, unless you wish to sponsor our films (please contact if so), we need to gain subscribers and viewers to turn into pennies to invest in more quality films about football, (yes, I’m asking you to please subscribe)
I’m sure our style will evolve over time as we make more and more. But I wouldn’t ask you to subscribe without offering you a look at what we are doing and I’m happy to write that we released our first film with a second already filmed and on its way.
Initially we thought we would start filming in order to produce things during the 2025/26 season but almost as soon as we had decided this was what we were going to do, we were invited to film the Ukrainian club, Shakhtar as they played a ‘home’ Champions League game in exile at the Veltins Arena, in Gelsenkirchen. Forced to play away from their home of Donetsk in the East of the Ukraine since the 2014 Russian invasion, their story is so important more than 10 years since they last played there and with the future of Donetsk and the wider Donbas region becoming a political pawn, Shakhtar are a symbol of hope and resilience in the face of a war that has claimed the lives of so many.
What we found was a great club, surviving and succeeding in the most impossible of sporting circumstances and an amazing fanbase, many of whom were forced to move as refugees to Germany.
It’s the first of what Dominik and I hope are many and hopefully not the last we make about shakhtar. Once again, please help us make more by subscribing, liking, following, sharing and simply watching…