Not two minutes after his side’s dramatic, extra-time quarter-final victory over Switzerland on Saturday, Argentina head coach Lionel Scaloni was already fielding questions about the semi-final. Looming on the horizon was a match against bitter rivals England.
“This won’t just be a special game from a footballing standpoint,” a reporter asked in Spanish, “but also in an emotional sense. How do you imagine you and the players will come out for this game and what message would you give to all of us Argentines that are …”
Scaloni cut the reporter off. “This is a football match, OK?” he said curtly. “The message is that this is a football match. Let’s not look for anything else. This is a football match.”
Maradona’s ghost: A history of tension
Forty years ago, in the buildup to a match against England in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup, Diego Armando Maradona also met the press, standing outside Argentina’s training facility. Many reporters had positioned the match as a proxy for the Falklands war, the 74-day conflict four years earlier that claimed 649 Argentinian soldiers, 255 British soldiers, and three islanders. Control of the Falkland Islands – known as the Malvinas in Argentina – had been wrested back by Britain after a brief Argentine occupation.
“This is just a match, OK?” said Maradona, repeating himself several times, just as Scaloni would decades later. Maradona persisted with that narrative, his teammates remember, until the two teams walked out of the tunnel at Estadio Azteca the next day.
“Diego was walking in line with us,” Argentina defender José Luis Brown recalled before his death in 2019, “and he started raving. He says: ‘Let’s go, yeah? These motherfuckers killed our neighbours, they killed our relatives.’ I understood, obviously … After the anthems, nobody said anything. We hadn’t said anything about that before the game but we’d all been thinking about it. We just went out there and ran.”
Maradona’s enduring presence
Wednesday’s semi-final between England and Argentina is, of course, not just a game. To the English in particular, it is no longer about the Falklands war. To Argentinians, the conflict still persists in memory and has been passed down to players and coaches via oral history, inescapable in print and social media alike. Maradona persists as well, still very much the figurehead of all of it even after his death in 2020. English fans do not hold up flags bearing the likeness of Bobby Charlton or Bobby Moore during matches; supporters of Brazil do not do so with Pelé.
The image of Maradona has been ever present throughout this World Cup, as it was in 2022 in Qatar. In stadiums across the United States, it has been held aloft by Argentinian supporters, often alongside the heir to his throne, Lionel Messi, and his name has been invoked in song. AI has added a new layer: in one widely circulated post, Messi visits Maradona in heaven as the two walk alongside Jesus Christ himself. It is a level of idolatry reserved solely for El Pibe de Oro.
Maradona’s views of England have also been kept alive. A new generation of Argentina fans have been exposed to iconic images and quotes circulating on social media – the photo of Maradona celebrating his second goal in 1986, framed by furious English supporters behind him. Clips of him saying he played that match with not only his boots, but a rifle as well, seeking vengeance. And more recent rants – claims that England stole their victory against Colombia in the 2018 World Cup, and the 1966 World Cup as well.
Anthem and emotion
Not that Argentina’s current squad needed any help. After their dramatic victory over Egypt in the last 16, the team sang and danced in their locker room, chanting the lyrics to La Cuarta Estrella (The Fourth Star): “I’m Argentine from the cradle to the grave, / For Malvinas, for Diego, for the last [championship] of Leo, / Argentina, I want to see you as ‘bicampeon’.” The song, adopted by players and fans as the anthem of this World Cup, was released in March – long before Argentina knew they would face England.
All of this – the spectre of Maradona, anti-English sentiment fueled by decades of on-field drama – is likely to inspire an Argentina side that has played 240 minutes of football in less than a week. This collection of players has yet to truly demonstrate their quality at this World Cup, led by an ageing core and nearly eliminated twice by far inferior opposition. At times, they seem to have advanced on chaos alone.
Messi faces England for first time
Messi, notably, has never played against England, having missed his only chance in 2005 while serving a red card suspension, in what would have been his fifth cap. After Argentina’s victory over Switzerland, Messi breezed past reporters towards the team bus, stopping only briefly to answer a few questions. He was almost immediately asked about England.
“It’s a special match because it’ll be my first time facing England,” he said. “I’ve played against almost every major national team, but never them. England are one of football’s great powerhouses, so it’s always exciting to take on a team of that caliber, especially in a World Cup semi-final.”
It is the type of bland, nonchalant answer expected from one of the most media-trained players in the world, one who rarely opens up. And it was also easy enough to see that there was much more at stake for him in what could prove to be his final meaningful match in an Argentina shirt. Like Scaloni – and Maradona before him – Messi wasn’t fooling anyone.
