{"id":800621,"date":"2026-07-14T22:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T22:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/800621\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T22:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T22:43:10","slug":"war-antics-and-vitriol-the-england-v-argentina-rivalry-is-real-but-now-it-is-only-about-football-world-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/800621\/","title":{"rendered":"War, antics and vitriol \u2013 the England v Argentina rivalry is real but now it is only about football | World Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

After confirmation that match 102, one of the World Cup<\/a> semi-finals, would be England v Argentina, the 1982 Falklands\/Malvinas conflict was mentioned at Lionel Scaloni\u2019s press conference. \u201cNo, no, no,\u201d the Argentina head coach tut-tutted emphatically. \u201cThis is just a football match. Let\u2019s not look for other stuff. It\u2019s a football game against a great team, with a great manager who I admire. But it\u2019s a football match. End of.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Argentina<\/a> midfielder Rodrigo De Paul concurred: \u201cWe understand it\u2019s a football game that transcends; it brings back memories of what Diego did. We sing songs about our Malvinas heroes, mainly to remember them, but we have to understand that it\u2019s a football match and that the Malvinas have to be discussed elsewhere. What happened was an atrocity and we always remember the fallen, but what we want is to win this match to get to the final.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Diego did\u201d, of course, refers to the few minutes in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England when Diego Maradona<\/a> stunned the world by first punching the ball into the net and then dribbling past several England players to score what became known as the goal of the century. Everything that is possible in football was displayed by one man in a single event bookended by two goals. The good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, rolled into a few moments that left a mark on everyone watching. A before and after moment in World Cup history.<\/p>\n

After the game Maradona joked that he hadn\u2019t handled the ball, \u201cmaybe it was the hand of God\u201d, and later still said it \u201cfelt good \u2013 like pickpocketing an Englishman\u201d. The notion that it was somehow a homage to the fallen in the South Atlantic conflict four years earlier made the idea of retribution for the war somehow stick. But a lesser\u2011known quote came in 2014 when, working for Venezuelan TV during the World Cup, Maradona referred to a senseless war orchestrated \u201cby two murderous governments\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the 1986 World Cup in Mexico an arranged fight between Argentinian barra bravas and English hooligans took place. One barra brava involved was also a Falklands\/Malvinas veteran. I met him years later at a Boca Juniors v River Plate derby in Buenos Aires and asked him if belonging to a firm was in some ways similar to being in the army. \u201cNobody hates war more than a soldier,\u201d he said, pointing at the terraces. \u201cThis here is about love, beauty and joy. This has nothing to do with hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Owen scores his solo goal during England\u2019s defeat by Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. Photograph: Ted Blackbrow\/Daily Mail\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The great Argentinian novelist and sportswriter Juan Sasturain once said: \u201cWe have a lot to thank the English for. They gave us Borges\u2019s literature, and they gave us football.\u201d Jorge Luis Borges\u2019s literature was indeed hugely influenced by his anglophile intellect. He died only a week before the quarter-final in 1986 and, as the 40th anniversary of his death (and the match) came and went, many sought to link the two, as if Borges\u2019s genius had somehow morphed into Maradona\u2019s \u2013 one great artist leading another to glory.<\/p>\n

Borges famously described the Falklands conflict as \u201ctwo bald men fighting over a comb\u201d and though he didn\u2019t like football, some have managed to find a ghostly significance in the fact that the decisive goal in Argentina\u2019s last-32 match against Cape Verde<\/a> was an own goal by a player called Diney Borges.<\/p>\n

Encounters between the two countries have a lasting impact that shape the way we play, consume and think about football. There are differences, but also much in common. \u201cIt\u2019s the fixture where the Mexican wave doesn\u2019t stand a chance,\u201d the former Argentina forward Jorge Valdano said in 1998, when the countries met again on a World Cup stage. The game is too important for both sets of fans. That night in Saint\u2011\u00c9tienne an exaggerated media hype of a potential clash between gangs mobilised extra police but, apart from a dark town square where people were shouting inside a cordon, nothing untoward happened. Atlanta has enhanced security to ward off potential violent clashes now, too.<\/p>\n

Lionel Scaloni (second right) and his assistants (left to right) Roberto Ayala, Walter Samuel and Pablo Aimar. Photograph: Juan Mabromata\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

There is so much football history between the two sides. On the pitch in 1998 Michael Owen\u2019s solo run towards goal left everyone gasping. Yet David Beckham\u2019s sending off for reacting to a deliberate provocation by Diego Simeone stole the headlines. In 2002 Beckham avenged the calamity that befell him in 1998.<\/p>\n

Sven-G\u00f6ran Eriksson had a psychologist on board who reportedly told the players not to make eye contact with the Argentinians \u2013 so, as Simeone approached him with a taunting handshake while he was preparing to take a penalty, Beckham simply looked away and scored. It was Argentina\u2019s earliest departure from a World Cup in decades, not getting past the group stage.<\/p>\n

The most recent match between the two countries was a friendly in Geneva in 2005, which England<\/a> won. Walter Samuel and Roberto Ayala were the central defenders for Argentina that day but Diego Borinsky, Scaloni\u2019s official biographer, says the coach Jos\u00e9 P\u00e9kerman realised during that game that Javier Zanetti, his right\u2011back, should in the future be replaced by Scaloni. Today, Scaloni is the leader of a coaching team that comprises Samuel and Ayala as well as Pablo Aimar, with an emphasis on congeniality, strong human bonds and enjoyment.<\/p>\n

In 2026 the passion, determination and resilience of both squads comes through, as does the emotional intensity of the relationship between both sets of players with their fans and teammates.<\/p>\n

After their quarter-final matches, both Scaloni and Thomas Tuchel said pitchside<\/a> that their teams were lucky and that technically there was a lot they could improve \u2013 but possessed a mentality they could bottle and sell, in Tuchel\u2019s words.<\/p>\n

War, antics and vitriol are part of the shared story between these nations, but the lasting legacy also includes friendship, poetry, rock and pop. Roll on match 102.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After confirmation that match 102, one of the World Cup semi-finals, would be England v Argentina, the 1982…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-800621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}