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Always Gold
The League on the Island
Season 1, Ep. 3
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How political prisoners on Robben Island built a democracy from a football league.
Between 1966 and 1991, political prisoners on Robben Island built and ran a competitive football league with a written constitution, trained referees, and a formal appeals process. The men who built it included a future Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa. This is the story of the Makana Football Association — and the direct line from a referee's notebook in a prison cell to the Constitution of a democratic republic.
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4. Win or Lose, But Always With Democracy
23:48||Season 1, Ep. 4In 1982, under Brazil's military dictatorship, a football club in São Paulo ran itself as a full democracy. Players, coaches, and the kit man all had equal votes on wages, transfers, and training schedules. The man who led it had a medical degree, smoked cigarettes, and had been named after an ancient Greek philosopher by his father. They won the Campeonato Paulista twice. This is the story of the Democracia Corinthiana.
2. Chapecoense - The dream that fell from the sky
18:54||Season 1, Ep. 2In November 2016, a plane carrying a Brazilian football club crashed into a mountainside in Colombia. 71 people died — eleven miles from the runway. They were flying to the biggest game in their club's history. This is the full story of Chapecoense: from the fourth division of Brazilian football to the Copa Sudamericana final, and the reckless decision that destroyed everything in an instant.
1. The Football War
17:41||Season 1, Ep. 1Three matches, one war — El Salvador vs Honduras, 1969.In June 1969, three World Cup qualifying matches between El Salvador and Honduras preceded four days of armed conflict, thousands of deaths, and a chain of consequences that lasted decades. This is the Football War — what caused it, what happened, and what FIFA did about it. The answer to the last question is nothing.