‘Win’ delves into NYCFC

THE Tribeca Film Festival can always be counted on for good sports films, this year’s most intriguing entry being “Win!” — a 104-minute documentary about the birth of New York City FC.

Part-owned by the Yankees, NYCFC became a Major League Soccer franchise in 2013, playing its first season at home in Yankee Stadium in 2015. Early on, a decision was approved to give a small film crew what seems like total access.

The result is a look deep inside the team as it assembles itself and begins trying to capture a fan base as passionate as the players and coaches, and especially the team’s sporting director Claudio Reyna, the former captain of the U.S. men’s national team.

“We were aware of the cameras at the beginning, but then we got used to them,” Reyna tells the Daily News. “We started to forget they were even there. We got to know the filmmaker and cameramen, and became used to seeing their faces around, so they became just another part of our group.”

In close focus are the team’s first coach, Jason Kreis, and Spanish soccer star David Villa, the coal miner’s son who is paid lavishly to sign on and anchor a team that includes recent NCAA standouts making well below $100,000 a year.

Director Justin Webster used a similar vérité style in a 2004 film about FC Barcelona, filming constantly until the subjects seem unguarded. For “Win!” Webster estimates his crew shot between 250 and 300 hours of film between May 2014 and October 2015.

A former newspaperman, Webster convinced the team to let him film in locker rooms, practices, hangouts, executive board meetings, and expansiondraft-war-room strategy sessions. The film’s most satisfied audience might be sports business nerds, their numbers perhaps more plentiful in New York than hardcore NYCFC supporters (for whom this is required viewing).

The team did have some editorial control, asking Webster to exclude a few things he says were inconsequential — though what remains seems plenty intimate.

“In the end I think it’s the film that I would have made if it had been totally independent, with some tiny changes that make no difference,” Webster says.

“Nobody likes watching themselves on camera, but that’s the same for all of us,” says Reyna. “The ups and downs of our first season reflect a unique part of the history of our club and we are all proud that we have captured that.”