It Wasn’t A Match, It Was ‘The Match’: Cannes Premieres Thrilling Film On World Cup’s Greatest Contest, England Vs. Argentina 1986

“It’s only football. Period,” Maradona insisted in pre-game interviews. But politics hung over Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, where the match was played, like a persistent layer of smog.

The directors, though Argentinian, take a balanced approach to the story, interviewing surviving members of both teams, including Lineker (Maradona died in 2020).

“It was very important to shed light in a very neutral way, acknowledging that we are Argentinians,” Cabral tells Deadline. “There’s always a small kind of bias because of just knowing what you know. But I lived for 10 years in London, and some of my best friends are from there, and I felt very welcomed.”

Franco wasn’t born when the 1986 match was played. Cabral still has childhood memories.

“I was in third grade. My grandmother used to take care of me in the afternoon because my parents were working. And I remember one day I got back from school; it was 2 p.m. And my grandmother was watching TV, a football match. And I was like, ‘That’s strange. My grandmother watching football, that’s not normal,’” Cabral recalls. “And she says, ‘This is the World Cup.’ ‘What is the World Cup?’ [I ask]. ‘The best players from each team from each country play against the best players of another country.’ And my mind exploded like, ‘Oh, so we can play a game around the planet, like a championship.’ And it was really mind-blowing for me.”

Gary Lineker in 'The Match'

The documentary is narrated by Lineker and Jorge Valdano, an important player for Argentina’s 1986 squad. The filmmakers took a distinctive visual approach to the interviews, reuniting the teams on neutral ground – in Spain. They shot the players in a sort of black box – lighting each man cinematically so they “looked like Clint Eastwood,” Cabral notes.

Franco continues, “We thought about that space as a special place where the match will live forever. That space in black and white where we shoot, we show the images [on screen] and the footage of the match. It’s like kind of a museum, a place when we do an homage of the match.”

Maradona, as the author of the two Argentinian goals (including the infamous “Hand of God” tally) and perhaps the greatest footballer to ever live, occupies a big place in The Match. But just as soccer is a team sport, this is a collective enterprise, drawing on the memories of Oscar Ruggeri, Peter Shilton, John Barnes, Jorge Burruchaga, Ricardo Giusti, and Julio Olarticoechea, as well as Lineker and Valdano.

“It’s a choral piece,” Cabral notes. “In fact, we really wanted people in the audience to be like, ‘Why am I watching this? What’s going on? But I cannot get enough of this.’ It should be like history, but at the same addictive.”

'The Match' poster

A sequel to the 1986 match could happen this year as England and Argentina are considered among the favorites to win the World Cup, along with Spain and France. Argentina is the defending champion.

“It’s part of our culture in a way. In Argentina, the soccer — football — is so important,” Franco affirms. “It’s part of our everyday conversations and it’s part of who we are. And especially that team [of 1986] and especially this match was iconic and incredibly significant for us in all sorts of ways. So that’s kind of the thing that we want to share in this documentary.”

The 40th anniversary of England vs. Argentina falls on June 22. After the Cannes world premiere, Cabral and Franco will take The Match to Argentina for a major screening on May 22.

“We want to do the premiere [in Argentina] before the World Cup starts,” Franco says, acknowledging reality. Once the tournament begins, the eyes of football fans around the world will not veer from the pitch.

Watch the trailer for The Match above.

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