For many football fans Brazil’s 1970 World Cup winning team remains the greatest ever. While the scenes in 1978 from the River Plater stadium of ticker tape cascading down onto the joyous Argentinian team remains one of the most evocative in footballing history.
Cameroon, one of the World Cup's newest entrants, stunned the world by beating defending champion Argentina in their first game. This set the scene for one of the most remarkable tournaments of modern times.
The fates of three men who would ultimately end up in the same club team, defined the World Cup of 1998. David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and the 22-year-old Brazilian sensation, Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima, enjoyed very contrasting fortunes on the greatest sporting stage of all.
This is a Shakespearean tale told in the style of a spaghetti western, and played out over 16 years, three continents and five world cups – a tale of rejection, shame, redemption, revenge, glory… and a terrible, slow fall from grace. A prodigy, a genius, a cheat – Diego Maradona has been – and is – all of these things. He’s a complicated man : both hero and villain, madman and genius. In this film, we try to get to grips with Maradona's motivations and multiple personalities - and get inside hos head. How and why did he do what he did. Could Maradona ever be stopped - could he ever explain it himself? The story has five clear acts, and it's classical in structure.
On the 8th of July shock waves spread to every corner of the globe. Host nation Brazil v Germany, the world’s two most successful football nations collided with a shuddering impact. But it very quickly became apparent that this wasn’t a contest of equals, but a rout – the teams seemed to swap tactics before our very eyes, and it was the Germans who silenced the crowd and an entire nation, with an avalanche of goals.