Captains of the World is a 2023 documentary series built around the 2022 FIFA World Cup, made by a United Kingdom production team whose cameras stayed with the national squads for the length of the tournament.
What is Captains Of The World about?
The series covers a single edition of football's largest national-team competition, following its thirty-two participating squads from the opening fixtures through to the closing match. Rather than rebuilding the tournament out of broadcast highlights, the production drew on material recorded alongside the teams themselves: preparation days, tactical meetings, the corridors and back rooms that sit outside the ninety minutes shown on air, and the reactions that arrived once a result was settled. Episodes run to roughly forty-five minutes and move through the competition in order, so the shape of the tournament — group stage, knockout rounds, final — also becomes the shape of the series. Conversations with players and coaching staff carry a large share of the storytelling.
About the cast
The on-camera figures credited for the series are Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, Luka Modric, Cristiano Ronaldo, Olivier Giroud, Didier Deschamps, Kingsley Coman and Lionel Scaloni. Because this is documentary work rather than fiction, the people listed appear as themselves, in footage gathered around the 2022 tournament, and not as characters written for them. Directing credit goes to Gabe Turner and Benjamin Turner.
Context & significance
Sports documentaries built on close access to a squad have become a recognisable form over the past decade, and this one turns that approach on a World Cup rather than on one club or one league season. The production is credited to the United Kingdom and carries a 2023 catalogue year, which places it after the tournament had finished and the recorded material could be cut into a completed account. The title is classified as documentary rather than drama: nothing is restaged with actors, and what appears on screen is the footage taken at the time.
Watching Captains Of The World on Ktime
Captains of the World streams on K-Time with a free account login. Reading this page needs no account at all; only playback asks you to sign in. K-Time is built for Persian-speaking viewers living abroad, with a Farsi interface across web, mobile and television, and documentary series sit in the same library as the films and the live channels.