89

The documentary is about the night of 26 May 1989. To win the league, Arsenal had to beat Liverpool by two goals at Anfield, and nobody thought it would happen. In the last minute of the match, Michael Thomas scored and Arsenal were champions. The film builds that season and that night together with the accounts the players give now: Tony Adams, Lee Dixon, Paul Merson, Nigel Winterburn and the others. The second line of the story is the season itself: the defensive system the manager George Graham built, a young squad, and the disasters English football went through that year. More than ninety supporters had died at Hillsborough in April 1989 and the end of the season was played in that shadow; the film touches on it. The documentary is partisan, because it is told entirely from the Arsenal side and the Liverpool side barely speaks. But the closing minutes of that match are among the most watched images in the football archive.