Presented at the Cannes Film Festival, The Match revisits Argentina v England at the 1986 World Cup, weaving unseen footage with the era’s fraught context and Diego Maradona’s two defining goals.
According to L’Équipe, the 91-minute Argentine documentary, shot in black and white, covers the 2-1 quarter-final at the Azteca in Mexico, 2,000 metres up before 115,000 spectators, and features Gary Lineker, Peter Shilton, John Barnes, Jorge Valdano, Oscar Ruggeri, Julio Olarticoechea and Jorge Burruchaga. Lineker, the tournament’s leading scorer with six, is among the central voices.
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The tone is not prosecutorial, even as it revisits Wembley 1966, when captain Antonio Rattin’s red card is said to have shifted another quarter-final. The film also frames football within Anglo-Argentine tensions shaped by the Falklands War four years earlier. Burruchaga says that, had he not been a footballer, he would have been obliged to take up arms. It includes previously unseen material from the conflict and from Argentina’s preparation under controversial coach Carlos Bilardo.
There are tales of Carlos Bilardo’s superstitions and of Argentina hastily buying an electric-blue shirt in the Tepito market. Steve Hodge ended up with Maradona’s sequinned No 10 from that day. England manager Bobby Robson called the opener a poor decision without blaming Tunisian referee Ali Bennaceur, and later used far sterner words about the handball.
Valdano remarks that, against England, even a handball goal still counts. Then, as Lineker recalls, none of them imagined what came three minutes and seven seconds later, when Maradona slalomed 60 metres past five players to clinch victory.
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