THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

Italia 90: When Football Changed Forever, 9pm, Ch4

IT’S hard to imagine today, but football in England in the 1980s was far from the force of nature that it is today. In Thatcher’s Britain, the game had been blighted by persistent hooliganism, and the horrors of the Hillsborough disaster were still a painful open wound. As an England team featuring Paul Gascoigne (pictured) prepared for the World Cup in Italy, the only headlines were about how badly behaved our fans would be. But something magical happened. This three-part series goes back to that dizzying summer when football recaptured the public imagination to a soundtrack of Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma. The English game’s fortunes soon went into hyperdrive.