What Happened at Halftime…?
- Antony Cirocco
- Jun 9
- 5 min read
Film Title: “Liverpool's Miracle of Istanbul”
Dir: Matt Rudge
Release Date: May 19, 2026
Review by Antony Cirocco
“Liverpool's Miracle of Istanbul” is a new documentary film by Matt Rudge, who also worked as a showrunner on “Drive to Survive” in 2024. With that kind of pedigree, one should expect a lot from this documentary and by and large it delivers. It has great character development, the plot boils to a crescendo, there is a lot to like about this documentary, and if you are a fan of English football, then you will find this documentary entertaining.
If you are not a fan of English football, then this documentary may not be so interesting, as you will need some rudimentary knowledge of the English Premier League and Champions League to be engaged. For the uninitiated, this documentary lacks the background knowledge required to understand the significance of the sport, the club, the players and the tournament. It will be a stretch for those people, but for the fans of football, it is a great watch.
The film follows Liverpool FC team under the stewardship of their new coach, Rafael Benítez, who, on paper, is a brilliant tactically focused coach with a distinct lack of people skills, albeit the skills needed to engage footballing rock stars like Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher. Their team is failing (by Liverpool standards) and sliding down the Premier League ladder when Gerrard, born and raised in Liverpool, declares he wants to win the Champions League, despite a poor run of form for the club.
This film sits alongside some great football documentaries made recently but it doesn’t go deep enough into the club's ethos and AC Milan barely gets a mention. It skips over any opportunities for depth, instead picking off topics like reading post-it notes on the way to a final boss stage, the showdown in Istanbul with AC Milan.
This showdown in Instanbul is seen as one of the Liverpool’s modern high points, and rightly so, but this documentary doesn’t capitalise on that, rather it cashes in on Jamie Carragher’s newfound popularity as a pundit but the real depth of story and character isn’t there, not like the “Kenny Dalglish” documentary by Asif Kapdia, which delves in to the clubs history and the fans in some detail. Here, the club and the fans are somewhat of a backdrop to “the big game” in this documentary “Liverpool's Miracle of Istanbul”.
Again, there were some subtle differences in production value/ taste that could have made the documentary better. The overbearing colour grade on the interviewees with excessive close-ups looking into the camera just doesn’t hold true to the working-class football of Liverpool FC. This was a style well and truly above substance decision that went too far.
This is a great watch, again for football fans, but unlike the “Kenny Dalglish” or “Diego Maradona” documentaries made by Asif Kapadia, this film lacks depth, and that's not because of the scenario that Liverpool found themselves in during the Grand Final of the Champions League, was uneventful, quite the opposite. There was plenty of story there to tell. It was the director Rudge who chose to use the coach as an archetypal villain instead of the elephant in the room, Carlo Ancelotti, the coach of AC Milan, arguably one of the greatest football teams of all time. Instead, the director chose to focus on the Liverpool coach Rafael Benítez as the villain. This meant there were no interviews with Ancelotti or any of the AC Milan players. This oversight meant the film lacked contrast and editorial balance. The director, Rudge, coming off the back of the 2024 season of “Drive to Survive”, the incredibly successful episodic factual series about the Formula 1 Grand Prix series, is a program where editorial balance is not a requirement for storytelling, and it shows here in the documentary.
A highlight was the use of archival footage of Liverpool and the lead-up to the games. The producers here had access to the game footage, so there was high-quality footage of the gameplay that intercut with the interviews really worked.
The sound design was great, and the use of diegetic sounds in the stadium was great; it built atmosphere and tension. The off-the-shelf corporate video music, at times, just got annoying, and it was not used to motivate in any way. The music at times was left in to keep the tension, like a droning sound in a high-stakes video game, but could have been fitted to the vision, as it was towards the end of the film. I guess the director Rudge, coming off the back of a season of “Drive to Survive”, just wanted to use the music to fill the audio void; this was an oversight.
Let’s be to the point, this is a one-eyed look at Liverpool FC and the moments in Istanbul that further shaped the club's role in English Football, in Europe, as a club that fights in times of adversity. At times, we hear about the players' struggles throughout the league, and momentarily, the coach shares his vulnerability, but it’s all very thin. What would otherwise have been a brilliant documentary was relegated to…good due to the lack of editorial balance, which is a pity.
There is a strong undercurrent of resilience and rising to challenge the odds, but somehow, it doesn’t hit the mark. The captain of the team, Steven Gerrard, is hailed as a hero, but their rockstar striker Michael Owen, leaves at the beginning of the film (which is also the beginning of the season) and the new Coach is never embraced by the director Rudge as either a hero or a leader. Despite this, the players all hail him as their greatest ever coach at the end of the film? It doesn’t ring true. So the underdog story doesn’t never really lands; it’s portrayed more as a player group that saves the club, and the coach bumbles along trying to keep up, which isn’t a true reflection of their tenure in Benitez’s first season. He won the Champions League, c’mon, give the guy a break.
This film is a fun watch for fans but for the Coach, some factual accuracy might have painted a better picture. A lack of emotional depth and history would have enabled a deeper emotional understanding of the momentous occasion and increased the viewer experience and connection to the story.
There are too many interviews and not enough depth there either; the pacing flies along at a clip, and then the importance of the final act doesn’t land. This documentary is for fans, not for those who appreciate good documentaries.
Watch it! It is good. For older football fans, there are some memories there in between the times, after free-to-air screening of games where, once played, you never saw them again, and before YouTube and streaming, where great moments in sport live forever. For bolted-on fans, this film will be a chance to revisit a classic match with newfound depth… not too much, though.
Like many celebrity documentaries of the past, this film is spectacular but lacks that next level of substance, like what actually happened at halftime. I have watched this film twice, and I still don’t know. The contract with the audience was broken here, as the director needed to deliver but didn’t.
It’s a good film, just not great. If you are a Manchester United fan you will hate it.
Final rating, 2.5 out of 5
Review by Antony Cirocco
"Untold UK: Liverpool's Miracle of Istanbul" available on Netflix, Official Trailer, on YouTube here -
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