Forty years after Argentina and England met at the Estadio Azteca in one of football’s most famous World Cup matches, The Match returns to the players who lived through it. Cinematographer Pablo García Gallego explains how portraiture, black and white cinematography and a carefully designed studio environment became central to capturing their memories.
This summer marks 40 years since Argentina and England met at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City in a World Cup quarter-final that has become one of football’s defining moments. Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal, followed moments later by a solo effort that would be voted FIFA’s Goal of the Century, ensured the match would become part of football history. Less visible was the political backdrop against which it was played, arriving four years after the Falklands War and carrying a significance that extended well beyond the pitch.
Premiering at Cannes before its cinema release in Latin America, The Match revisits that story through archive footage and the recollections of the players who experienced it. By the time cinematographer Pablo García Gallego joined directors Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco, much of the documentary had already been assembled, with archive material, editing and sound design establishing the tone of the film. The interviews – the missing pieces of this jigsaw – would become the only newly captured material.
“They sent me the episodes that were already pretty much edited,” García Gallego recalls. “That was a huge help because I could immediately understand the tone of the editing, the sound design and the visual language. Almost everything was in black and white and, although it was a documentary, it already had a very cinematic feel.
“I also realised very quickly that this wasn’t really a film about football. It was about something much more human. It was about politics, about war, about how something like a football match could help heal a wound that had existed between two countries. Once I’d understood that, it completely changed the way I thought about photographing it.”
The directors had been equally clear about where the emphasis should lie. “Juan and Santiago kept saying the same thing: ‘What matters most are the portraits.” The film has different phases, but the shooting had to be about the faces. They wanted to see the soul of these people. They wanted the audience to spend time with the people who had lived through that story.”
The production itself was deceptively simple. Former England and Argentina players entered a black studio and sat facing a large projection screen while archive footage from that infamous match played in front of them. Careful consideration was given to creating an environment where the players’ memories and emotions could unfold naturally.
“On paper it sounds straightforward,” he says. “You have people sitting in front of a black background talking about their lives. But then you ask yourself how you make those portraits interesting, or more importantly, how you make them honest. These are people who experienced something extraordinary 40 years ago. Our responsibility was to capture those faces in the most truthful way we could.”
Establishing a universal visual language
Black and white was one of the earliest creative decisions. It wasn’t intended to imitate the archive footage or blur the line between past and present. Instead, García Gallego saw it as a way of giving every interview the same visual language while allowing the archive material to remain exactly what it was.
“The directors wanted to shoot in black and white from the beginning,” he says. “As we talked more about the film, I understood why. For me, black and white became a metaphor for the story itself. You have two teams from different countries, two sides of a conflict, but black and white removes those differences. It applies the same visual language to everyone. It simplifies things. It lets you concentrate on the faces, on the light and the shadow, without making judgements about who you’re looking at.”
That decision influenced the production long before the cameras rolled. García Gallego created a monochrome LUT during pre-production and loaded it into every camera so that everyone on set, from the directors to the DIT, was looking at the same image throughout the shoot.
“I always try to begin post-production before we start filming,” he explains. “I shoot tests, create my own LUTs and then load them into the cameras. That means I’m lighting while looking at something that’s already very close to the finished image. Every day we refined the LUT a little more, but by the time we reached the grade we weren’t trying to discover the look because we already knew what it was.”
The set itself changed very little over the course of filming. A black studio, a projection screen and a carefully controlled lighting rig provided a consistent environment for every interview. The objective was to remove anything that might distract from the people sitting in front of the camera, and encourage the rawest of emotional recall.
“There was a phrase Juan and Santiago kept using during prep: ‘It has to feel planetary’,” Gallego recalls. “They wanted this feeling that the people were almost suspended in space. For me, the black background became that space and the faces became the stars.”
A large overhead soft source provided the foundation of the lighting, supported by additional fixtures positioned around the edge of the set to introduce shape and depth without changing the overall quality of the light. Rather than relying on a single source, different sections of the ceiling rig could be controlled independently, allowing subtle adjustments between contributors without interrupting the flow of filming.
“I didn’t want the light to feel as though it was only coming from the ceiling,” he says. “The overhead source gave us the softness we were looking for, but we also used additional soft sources around the room to bring light into the eyes and give the faces volume. The important thing was that we could change the direction of the light very quickly without stopping what was happening.”
The projector became just as important. Positioned behind the contributors and projecting archive footage onto a six-metre screen in front of them, it served the dual purposes of prompting memories while becoming part of the visual language itself.
“We knew a normal projector wouldn’t be powerful enough,” García Gallego explains. “We needed enough output to fill the screen, but I also wanted the projected light to exist within the room. We introduced a small amount of haze so that the beam became visible. As the archive images changed, the light changed with them. It became another character in the scene because it was directly connected to the memories they were reliving.”
For García Gallego, the main challenge with all of these technical considerations wasn’t the cinematography itself, but “creating an experience where people felt safe enough to forget they were on a film set. Once they started watching those images, we never wanted to interrupt them. We wanted to capture the expression, the look, the moments when they became emotional. That’s why everything had to happen live.”
The portrait camera
With the visual language established, Gallego began assigning each camera a specific role within the production. The three-camera set-up remained consistent throughout the interviews, allowing the crew to keep recording while responding to moments as they unfolded.
The Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65mm became the principal portrait camera, positioned closest to the players and fitted with prime lenses. An URSA Cine 12K provided a wider, stable angle, while the URSA Mini Pro 12K, equipped with a long zoom, searched for details: a glance towards the screen, hands clasped together, a fleeting expression that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
“The 17K was always my portrait camera,” Gallego says. “That was the one I wanted closest to the players because I wanted the portraits to be as expressive as possible. The other cameras all had their own jobs, but that one was there to capture the faces.”
He explains that choosing the 65mm sensor was more about camera position than creating an exaggerated shallow depth of field. “For me, there was one fundamental and philosophical reason for suggesting the 65mm camera. With a larger sensor I can move the camera physically closer to someone while still using portrait focal lengths that don’t distort the face. That means the viewer is closer to the person as well.”
“I wanted people watching the documentary to feel as close as possible to these former players without using wide-angle lenses,” he says. “Medium format allowed me to do that. It wasn’t about the background because the background was black. It was about creating portraits that felt immersive.”
Recording formats varied according to the demands of each sequence. The interviews themselves were generally captured in 4K, allowing the cameras to record continuously for several hours without interruption, while selected ‘object shots’ destined for visual effects were filmed in 12K or 17K to give the post-production team greater flexibility.
“I’ve never believed that you always have to shoot at the highest resolution,” he says. “Very few productions can afford to shoot everything in 17K. The important thing is having the choice. With the URSA Cine 17K I could shoot in 17K, 12K, 8K or 4K without cropping the sensor, so resolution became a creative decision rather than something the camera imposed on us.”
The experience comes first
For all the planning that went into The Match, Gallego believes the production ultimately reinforced a lesson that extends well beyond this film.
“What I’m most proud of isn’t necessarily the cinematography, it’s that you can see these people genuinely reliving those moments. They become emotional, they remember things they haven’t spoken about for years and, for a while, they forget we’re there.
“I’ve realised over the years that the experience you create as a cinematographer is just as important as the images themselves,” he reflects. “Sometimes we spend too much time trying to perfect the lighting or perfect the frame, but if the people in front of the camera don’t feel comfortable, none of that matter. On this film we created an environment where they could simply watch, remember and speak. I think that gave us something much more valuable than any individual shot.”
It’s a conclusion that also changed García Gallego’s own relationship with the story.
“I’ve never really been interested in football,” he admits. “When the directors first asked me if I liked football, I told them I didn’t. But working with Juan and Santiago, and listening to these players, I connected with something much bigger.”
“The Match isn’t really about football,” he concludes. “It’s about reconciliation. It’s about how something that brings people together can help heal old wounds. Whether you like football or not, I think that’s something everyone can understand.”
