Friday, 2 October 2026 at 6.30 pm
The documentary film The Match revisits the iconic encounter between Argentina and England played at the Azteca Stadium during the 1986 FIFA World Cup, intertwining rare archive footage – including Maradona's “Hand of God” – into a powerful reconstruction of the event. Off the pitch, the film traces more than two centuries of conflict between the two nations, from their first encounters to the Falklands War, portraying the match as both a sporting watershed and an echo of a deeper historical rivalry where the beauty of football meets the absurdity of war. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
After the Croatian premiere of the film, there will be a discussion featuring: Professor of Sociology Dražen Lalić, historian and co-founder of the football club ‘Zagreb 041’ Zlatko Nikolić, and political scientist and World section editor at Jutarnji list Tea Trubić Macan. The discussion will be moderated by journalist and editor at the Ideje.hr portal, Domagoj Novokmet.
Dražen Lalić is a full professor of sociology at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb, where he teaches, among other things, the course ‘Political and Social Aspects of Sport’. He contributes to a number of academic and professional journals, is the co-author of numerous books and studies, and regularly publishes articles in newspapers. He is the author of the books Torcida: A View from the Inside (1993 and 2011), Split versus Split. A Sociologist's View of the Problems of a City (2003), President Obama: The Path To The White House (2009), Five Years of Crisis (2014) and Two Houses Above the Sea (2025).
Zlatko Nikolić graduated in History from the Faculty of Philosophy in Pula, specialising in topics related to political parties and banditry in the early interwar period after the First World War. He works in Pula within the social care system at an institution that cares for children without adequate parental care. He is the co-founder of the football club ‘Zagreb 041’ (2014) and a former councillor in the Zagreb City Assembly.
Tea Trubić Macan graduated in political science from the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zagreb, after which she enrolled on the postgraduate programme ‘European Studies: Transnational and Global Perspectives’ at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). Since April 2024, she has been the World section editor at Jutarnji list, a media house where, since her journalistic beginnings, she has written about American, European and, more generally, global politics.