No player in World Cup history is more complicated, more brilliant, or more human than Diego Maradona. Episode 5 covers the 1982-1990 period — a time of extraordinary drama, outrageous genius, and the most famous goal in football history that was also a foul.

While Brazil were painting pictures, Europe was building engines. Episode 4 covers the tactical evolution that defined the 1966-1982 period — England’s single moment of glory, the German machine, the Dutch total football revolution, and the Italian art of defending.

Between 1958 and 1970, Brazil won the World Cup three times and a seventeen-year-old from São Paulo became the most famous footballer in the world. Episode 3 is about genius — individual, collective, and architectural — and the era when football became an art form.

The World Cup’s second and third editions were held in the shadow of fascism, and its fourth was followed immediately by the most devastating upset in football history. Episode 2 covers the years 1934 to 1950 — a period in which football was forced to share the stage with some of the darkest forces of the twentieth century, and somehow survived.

Before the billion-dollar broadcasts, before the superstar contracts, before the stadiums that could swallow entire cities — there was just a crazy idea: bring the whole world together to play football. Episode 1 explores the unlikely origins of the World Cup, the visionary and sometimes comically stubborn men who made it happen, and the remarkable first tournament in Uruguay in 1930 that nobody was quite sure would work.