After confirmation that match 102, one of the World Cup semi-finals, would be England v Argentina, the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas conflict was mentioned at Lionel Scaloni’s press conference. “No, no, no,” the Argentina head coach tut-tutted emphatically. “This is just a football match. Let’s not look for other stuff. It’s a football game against a great team, with a great manager who I admire. But it’s a football match. End of.”
The Argentina midfielder Rodrigo De Paul concurred: “We understand it’s 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’s 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.”
“What Diego did”, of course, refers to the few minutes in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England when Diego Maradona 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.
After the game Maradona joked that he hadn’t handled the ball, “maybe it was the hand of God”, and later still said it “felt good – like pickpocketing an Englishman”. 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‑known quote came in 2014 when, working for Venezuelan TV during the World Cup, Maradona referred to a senseless war orchestrated “by two murderous governments”.
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. “Nobody hates war more than a soldier,” he said, pointing at the terraces. “This here is about love, beauty and joy. This has nothing to do with hate.”
The great Argentinian novelist and sportswriter Juan Sasturain once said: “We have a lot to thank the English for. They gave us Borges’s literature, and they gave us football.” Jorge Luis Borges’s 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’s genius had somehow morphed into Maradona’s – one great artist leading another to glory.
Borges famously described the Falklands conflict as “two bald men fighting over a comb” and though he didn’t like football, some have managed to find a ghostly significance in the fact that the decisive goal in Argentina’s last-32 match against Cape Verde was an own goal by a player called Diney Borges.
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. “It’s the fixture where the Mexican wave doesn’t stand a chance,” 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‑Étienne 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.
There is so much football history between the two sides. On the pitch in 1998 Michael Owen’s solo run towards goal left everyone gasping. Yet David Beckham’s 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.
Sven-Göran Eriksson had a psychologist on board who reportedly told the players not to make eye contact with the Argentinians – 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’s earliest departure from a World Cup in decades, not getting past the group stage.
The most recent match between the two countries was a friendly in Geneva in 2005, which England won. Walter Samuel and Roberto Ayala were the central defenders for Argentina that day but Diego Borinsky, Scaloni’s official biographer, says the coach José Pékerman realised during that game that Javier Zanetti, his right‑back, 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.
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.
After their quarter-final matches, both Scaloni and Thomas Tuchel said pitchside that their teams were lucky and that technically there was a lot they could improve – but possessed a mentality they could bottle and sell, in Tuchel’s words.
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.
