Among those they interviewed was Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA, who is keen for the film to be shown to a wide audience during the forthcoming World Cup in Russia, not least because it covers a period when football first became a truly global game.

The Uruguayans also wanted to cover the development of football in England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so they set up their cameras at stadiums and university sports grounds that have been around for well over 100 years.

The script dwells on how attitudes differ between the countries: the public school love of fair play, sportsmanship, and adherence to the rules in England - and Uruguay’s creative "winning" mentality that, with a helping hand from Italy, helped it to dominate football for many years.

It will be a fascinating film, one that will show all viewers just how much football owes to Uruguay, whose brilliant players of the 1920s were innovators and adventurers who played a very significant role in the game’s early history.

There will be footage of Uruguay winning the Olympic football tournament in Paris in 1924, when they became the first team from South America to play in Europe.

The former international player Gabriel Hanot, co-inventor of the European Cup decades later, wrote in L’Equipe, "By far the best of the 22 teams has won the football World Cup [which is how the Olympic tournament was seen at the time].

"The victors’ principal quality is a marvellous virtuosity in the reception, control and use of the ball. To impeccable technique, the Uruguayans add clairvoyant tactics."

Other journalists from around the continent - in Spain, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy - would be similarly enthusiastic about Uruguay during their 1924 triumph and again in 1928, when they returned to successfully defend their Olympic title in Amsterdam.

More than a quarter of a million people wrote to the Olympic organisers asking for tickets for the 1928 final, a huge number at the time.

Such was the popularity of Uruguay that three years earlier, in 1925, their club side Nacional had toured Europe, winning wherever they went and watched by more than 800,000 people.

The first World Cup, in 1930, was hosted by Uruguay and they won that, too, beating Argentina in the final.

Their best players were Hector Scarone, Pedro Cea, captain Jose Nasizzi and "the Black Pearl" Jose Leandro Andrade, arguably the first "David Beckham" of international football.

Scarone was a great forward, reckoned to be the best in the game by Giusseppe Meazza, the great Italian after whom the stadium at San Siro is named.

But for popularity, none could match Andrade, a talented half-back - a midfield player nowadays - who was also an accomplished musician and dancer, and a world-class womaniser.

Europe had never seen anything like him, not least because he was black, and all the other teams were all-white.

Andrade was, in the words of the German academic and philosopher Hans Gumbrecht, "responsible more than anybody else in the first third of the 20th century for putting football on the map of international sports".

The social background of the team was one of the reasons for its long run of success, a point made by Aldo Mazzucchelli, who wrote the script for the documentary.

Mazzucchelli said, "A simple explanation of why Argentine and Uruguayan football have been so good for so long can be summarised in one word: Italy.

"Football came of age in the River Plate basin, along with the political reforms that transformed Uruguay at the beginning of the 20th century.

"Both were carried out in great measure by the sons of Italian immigrant workers, at the same time, in the same barrios full of tenements packed with immigrants, out of the same violent and creative happiness, and from the same excellence in art and precision in craft that have always been the best products of any Italian culture.

"While the English believed when they handed down their rules to us that we would abide by and play according to them, the rioplatenses took a completely different approach."

This involved, above all, learning better control of the ball and playing to keep possession.

There is a stereotypical view of Uruguay and Argentina as "dirty" teams, which may have been true at specific World Cups in 1986 and 1990, as well as in violent intercontinental club games in the 1960s.

But it was not true in 1950, when Uruguay won the World Cup for a second time, in Brazil, nor is it true now.

England’s involvement in international football when Uruguay were the undisputed champions was limited, to say the least.

Because of disputes over payments to "amateur" players in Olympic football, the Home Nations resigned from FIFA during Uruguay’s heyday, and England rarely played foreign opponents anyway.

The renowned sports historian Richard Holt wrote that at the start of the 20th century "The English felt football was their property and were disinclined to cooperate with foreigners."

Not until the 1950s did England finally play Uruguay, losing a friendly and a 1954 World Cup match.

The two are likely to go head-to-head again in the bidding for the 2030 World Cup.

England has already announced its intention to carry the flag for Europe, while Uruguay is jointly bidding with Argentina and Paraguay.

A hundred years on from their first World Cup, Uruguay will have a very good case to be centenary hosts.

They have history on their side, every bit as much as England.

Alan Hubbard is away