The bitter history of England vs Argentina, a World Cup semi-final steeped in bad blood
Lionel Scaloni called for calm. “The message,” he said, “is that this is a football game. That’s what I can say. We will be playing against a very tough opponent. They have an excellent coach. It’s a football game and that is all.”
The Argentina coach had just emerged from his team’s dressing room after their dramatic extra-time victory over Switzerland in Kansas City on Sunday evening. The scene he had left behind was not just of euphoric joy but of patriotic fervour. His players were singing their songs, bouncing up and down, banging the tables, singing of their desperation to win their country’s fourth World Cup, to do it for Lionel Messi, for the late Diego Maradona … and for “Las Malvinas”.
It is never just a football game where England and Argentina are concerned. Their first meeting in 21 years is a World Cup semi-final, meaning the stakes could hardly be higher. But this is a rivalry built around emotions, tensions, controversies and bitter feuds.
On the pitch, it revolves around the World Cup quarter-finals in 1986 in which Diego Maradona scored perhaps the most controversial and then the most beautiful goal in the competition’s history in the space of four minutes. But the enmity dates back to 1966 — Argentina players described as “animals” by England manager Alf Ramsey after a bad-tempered World Cup quarter-final in London — and takes in fiercely competitive meetings in 1998, featuring David Beckham’s red card, and 2002.
Off the pitch, it goes deeper, dating back to British invasions of Argentina in the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century — and to the ongoing dispute over the Falkland Islands, an archipelago in the Atlantic, around 300 miles from the southernmost tip of South America. Britain initially claimed the Falklands in 1774, reasserted its rule in 1832 and then again in 1982 when Argentinian military forces invaded what they call “Las Malvinas”. That triggered a 74-day war that ended with 907 casualties, the majority of them Argentine soldiers, and the islands back under British control.
At this point we would usually point out that historic conflicts have no relevance to a group of footballers who, even in the case of Messi, were born years after the Falklands War was over.
But the Argentina national team’s identity draws heavily from the legacy of Maradona, whose view of England was shaped by the Falklands War.
And when you see and hear their players singing so passionately about Maradona and “the boys from Malvinas who I’ll never forget”, you realise — as Scaloni will know better than anyone — that Wednesday’s clash in Atlanta is not just a World Cup semi-final. In the words of Jonathan Wilson, author of Angels with Dirty Faces, a history of Argentinian football, it is the latest instalment of a “strange, quasi-Oedipal relationship that manifests in football, each game adding new layers of intrigue and resentment”.
So much of it comes back to 1986. Maradona said in his autobiography that the goals he scored against England were “revenge (…) for everything that happened”, adding that he and his team-mates “knew a lot of Argentinian kids died (in the Falklands), shot down like little birds”.
But the day before that World Cup quarter-final in Mexico City, he was in diplomatic mood. There is archive video footage of him telling reporters, “Es solo futbol, punto,” (it’s only football, period). What Scaloni said on Sunday echoed that almost word for word.
Former Tottenham defender Gary Stevens, who was part of the England squad at that World Cup, says he can barely recall a mention of the Falklands in the build-up. He assumes it was different for the Argentina players, but he says the political undercurrent was not felt acutely in the England camp.
From the England team’s perspective, the animosity came from what happened on the pitch. After a goalless first half, in which he was subjected to some extremely rough challenges from England’s defenders, Maradona took the law into his own hands. When England midfielder Steve Hodge hit an attempted clearance skywards, the Argentina captain raced onto it, jumped with goalkeeper Peter Shilton and knocked the ball into the net with his hand before racing off in celebration.
Maradona punches the ball into the goal, he later said it was scored by ‘the Hand of God’ (Archivo El Grafico/Getty Images)
Shilton and some of his team-mates protested, but Tunisian referee Ali Ben Nasser saw nothing and the goal stood. Four minutes later Maradona scored what became known as the goal of the century, pirouetting away from Peter Beardsley and Peter Reid, dribbling past Terry Butcher and Terry Fenwick, feinting past Shilton and prodding the ball impudently into the net. As BBC commentator Barry Davies said immediately, “You have to say that’s magnificent. There’s no debate about that goal. That was just pure football genius.”
But at full-time, beaten 2-1, England’s players were livid once Shilton and Fenwick had described what had happened. “There was a whole raft of emotions,” Stevens says. “Some were inconsolable, in tears, almost breaking down. There were definitely other players that wanted to get into (Argentina’s) changing room and have a ‘sort out’ with them.”
Resentment grew when England’s players heard that, in his post-match interviews, Maradona said the handball was a “legitimate goal”. He later added a flourish by saying the goal was one part “the head of Diego” and another part “the Hand of God”. Bobby Robson, England’s manager, said it was more straightforward: the goal was scored with “the hand of a rascal”.
Maradona on his way to scoring the ‘goal of the century’ (AFP via Getty Images)
The animosity on both sides grew, as did the desire to frame the match solely in the context of the Falklands conflict.
As Maradona’s former Argentina team-mate Jorge Valdano said in an interview with the Mexican magazine Letras Libres earlier this year, the victory over England has “with the passage of time reached a dimension far greater than that of the World Cup final”.
“It was revenge for the Falklands War,” Valdano said. “How could a match weigh as much as a war? In symbolic terms, yes. For Argentina, it would have been unbearable to lose that match. And over time, that match did nothing but increase in importance.”
By 1998 the cast of players involved had changed completely, but the bad blood was still there. In both countries, the pre-match coverage centred around the Falklands and the ‘Hand of God’. From both angles, there was so much emphasis on revenge.
What followed in Saint-Etienne, in the round of 16, was another World Cup classic. “It was my first World Cup,” former Argentina captain Javier Zanetti tells The Athletic. “We knew we were up against a top side with great history and tradition, were up against legendary players like (Paul) Scholes, (Paul) Ince, Beckham, (Michael) Owen. It was such a long night — extra time and penalties — but for us it was unforgettable.”
It was 2-2 by the end of a breathless first half, in which Gabriel Batistuta and then Alan Shearer scored from the penalty spot, 18-year-old Michael Owen put England 2-1 up with a wonder goal and Zanetti equalised in stoppage time, scoring from what he describes as “a set-piece routine our coach had been working on for four years”.
But again the match swung on an incident early in the second half. Beckham was barged from behind by Diego Simeone and, as he was lying on the ground, felt the Argentina midfielder touching his head or his hair. Something inside Beckham snapped.
Under the nose of Danish referee Kim Milton Nielsen, Beckham kicked out at Simeone and was shown the red card. With 10 players, England survived the rest of the second half plus extra time, but ultimately they were beaten on penalties. Beckham was blamed by manager Glenn Hoddle, shunned by some of his team-mates and vilified by sections of the media and by football fans up and down the country for months afterwards.
Beckham is sent off after kicking Simeone (Mark Leech/Getty Images)
“I was responsible for taking the manager (Hoddle) to the press conference after the game,” says former FA chief executive David Davies. “The Argentines were in the press conference before us and seemingly they wouldn’t leave. There was some unpleasantness and tension. We could hear what was being sung in the Argentinian dressing room. Did we understand every word? No. But was it rude about Ingleses? For sure. We knew that.”
John Gorman, Hoddle’s assistant, remarked at the time that England’s players were affronted at seeing and hearing Argentina’s players “jumping up and down like madmen” in celebration on their team bus. According to Davies, “it made for a pretty unpleasant farewell”.
“People always talk about Maradona in 1986 and Beckham in 1998,” Davies says. “But I don’t think you can overlook what happened at Wembley in 1966.”
On Saturday, just hours before Argentina’s World Cup quarter-final against Switzerland, it was announced that Antonio Rattin, their former captain, had died at the age of 89.
Tributes centred on his distinguished playing career with Boca Juniors and the national team, but also on an incident in the World Cup quarter-final against England in 1966.
That afternoon at Wembley brought a deterioration of relations — not only at a sporting level but beyond — between two nations whose only previous World Cup meeting, a 3-1 England victory in Chile four years earlier, had passed peacefully.
The quarter-final in 1966, which England won 1-0, saw no fewer than 56 fouls in 90 minutes. England committed 36 of those fouls, to their opponents’ 20, but it was Argentina’s players who incurred the wrath of German referee Rudolf Kreitlein. Several of them were cautioned — the equivalent of a yellow card in those days, which is relevant to what happened next.
In the 35th minute Rattin, having already been cautioned, was reported to have run up to Kreitlein and shouted at him. In the referee’s eyes, this amounted to a second cautionable offence, so he indicated he was sending the player off.
Argentina players argue with referee Kreitlein after he sent off Rattin (third right) (PA Images via Getty Images)
Rattin said in various interviews afterwards that he had merely asked for an interpreter. He didn’t understand German and Kreitlein didn’t understand Spanish, so a standoff ensued and Rattin refused to leave the pitch. Testimonies from the time vary, but play was held up for at least eight minutes and some reports say that, in protest, Rattin sat down for several minutes on a red carpet reserved for Queen Elizabeth II before he was finally led away, targeted by catcalls and missiles as he went.
At the final whistle Ramsey, indignant, intervened to stop England right-back George Cohen swapping his shirt with an opponent. Afterwards he described the Argentine players as “animals”. The Argentinians, for their part, claimed they had been cheated. Remarkably, Rattin’s comments (“The referee was totally biased”, “A complete injustice”, “Simply put, England could not lose that match under any circumstances”) were published, unchallenged, in a video on FIFA’s website three months after Kreitlein died in 2012.
England went on to win the World Cup for what remains the only time, benefiting from another refereeing controversy for Geoff Hurst’s second goal in the final against West Germany, and in Argentina the recriminations continued.
Queen Elizabeth II smiles after presenting the Jules Rimet World Cup trophy to England captain Bobby Moore (Keystone/Getty Images)
On a recent visit to the UK’s National Archives, The Athletic saw a letter to the Foreign Office from the British Embassy in Buenos Aires in August 1966, referencing “a wave of anti-British feeling” in Argentina, including “hundreds of abusive telephone calls” to the embassy, protests outside the ambassador’s house and an “invasion” of a British exhibit at a show in Palermo. The newspapers, it said, were full of references linking England’s “dishonourable’ World Cup victory to its occupation of the Falklands.
“Most Argentines quite sincerely believe that the way the whole tournament was managed, or mismanaged, was a dirty business and a stain on the British reputation for sportsmanship and honesty,” the embassy wrote. “It (the ill feeling) will not upset our normal good relations with Argentina, but it has left a scar on our popular image which we shall not fail to be reminded of whenever, for one reason or another in the future, feelings become strained.”
The nations met again in Sapporo, Japan at the group stage of the 2002 World Cup. “It was incredibly intense,” says former England full-back Danny Mills. “There was obviously the history of Beckham and Simeone and we all knew about the history of England and Argentina, with the Falklands, so there was a particular spitefulness to the rivalry between the two teams.”
Again it was fiercely competitive. Again there was an unhealthy pre-match focus on revenge. In this case it was for Beckham, who had rehabilitated himself so successfully that he was now the team’s captain, fans’ favourite and media darling. The only goal of the game came from a Beckham penalty, a moment of redemption for him before he and his team-mates dug deep — and dropped ever deeper — to see out a precious 1-0 win.
Beckham scores his redemptive penalty (Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images)
“It was spiky,” Mills says. “There were individual battles all over the pitch, tackles that you would never get away with now, a few barges off the ball, a few stray arms. In the second half it was backs to the wall. I cleared two off the line and David Seaman made a couple of incredible saves.
“At the final whistle it all kicked off. Some of them wouldn’t shake hands. Zero sportsmanship. We went back down the tunnel and there were things being said in Spanish, which I didn’t understand but it wasn’t ‘congratulations’, that’s for sure. There was a little bit of spitting on, players refusing to swap shirts. We went into the dressing room and I think the emotion that had gone into the game and built up from four years earlier, everything just burst out.”
Mills celebrates as Beckham is embraced by England’s goalkeeper David Seaman at full time (Getty Images)
This time it was England’s players celebrating wildly and their Argentina counterparts seething in silence as they headed out of the stadium. The Argentina bus was so quiet this time that an English journalist, the late John Curtis, mistook it for a media shuttle bus and unwittingly got on. He didn’t twig until he looked up and saw he was sitting next to a glowering Batistuta.
But there was controversy here too. Argentina’s players felt Owen dived for the decisive penalty. Mauricio Pochettino, the defender who was challenging him, still brings it up 24 years later now that he is coach of the United States.
The challenge by Pochettino on Owen that led to England’s winning penalty (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Owen has said on many occasions that “I could have stayed on my feet” but made sure he went down in order to win the penalty. He said it was the right decision because his team won. What’s more, he has said it was by watching teams such as Argentina that he and his team-mates learned how to be “clever” in situations like that.
In Argentina, such talk attracts accusations of hypocrisy. Argentine football does not hide its fondness of viveza, which is shorthand for a type of cunning associated with streetwise actions and survival instinct. In England, where the ‘Hand of God’ was called out as cheating, there is a lot emphasis on honesty and fair play — except, Argentinians say, when it suits the English to turn a blind eye.
A few months ago Stevens received a message from a journalist telling him that former Argentina defender Oscar Ruggeri, who now appears on a TV show, wanted to get in touch about the possibility of a shirt swap.
Stevens knew what it would be about. He and Ruggeri had swapped shirts after that World Cup quarter-final 40 years ago. (How he wishes he had swapped with Maradona, whose match-worn jersey was sold by former England midfielder Steve Hodge for £7.1 million at auction in May 2022.) The journalist promised to translate the conversation.
A day or two later, his phone rang late at night in Thailand, where he now lives. Stevens answered it, a video call, and an awkward conversation ensued in which he was told that Ruggeri wanted his jersey back. Stevens laughed. “He wants his jersey back? I think he gave it to me,” the former England player said. “Listen,” he told Ruggeri, “I respect your jersey because you were a great player.”
There was then a kerfuffle at the other end of the line and, as far as Stevens knew, the conversation didn’t go much further.
He is a little confused that The Athletic knows of this conversation — and more so when informed that he was live on television at the time.
“So that was real?” he asks, aghast. “Oh no. I was … I wasn’t naked, but it was around midnight and I had nothing on my top half, my hair was all over the place and I must have looked a mess. Now you say it, they did say we were about to be live on TV and I thought, ‘No, surely we’re not’. So what did he say?”
What Ruggeri said, after nodding appreciatively at Stevens’ praise for him, was “Devuelven las islas!” (Give back the islands!). There were gasps, then a shriek from one of the presenters and chants of “Argentina!” from the audience before Ruggeri handed the phone over. Now that Stevens knows what was said, he is grateful he didn’t understand. It probably helped him avoid a diplomatic incident.
But it is a familiar refrain. When the English FA was trying to find support for its ill-fated bid to host the 2018 World Cup, the late Julio Grondona, who was the president of the Argentine Football Federation, told them, “If you give back the Malvinas, which belong to us, you will get my vote.” He also referred to the English as “pirates”, for which he later apologised to the FA.
In the past few days, with a World Cup semi-final looming, Argentina’s minister of foreign affairs Pablo Quirno has reasserted his nation’s claims to the Falklands. In an essay for Argentinian newspaper La Nacion, he wrote: “Time does not transform an illegitimate occupation into sovereignty”, adding that a 2013 referendum (in which 99.8 per cent of the islands’ population voted to remain under British rule), was illegitimate because today’s Falklanders were “artificially implanted by the occupying power”.
From Zanetti, at least, there is diplomacy. “The rivalry is very keenly felt,” the former Argentina captain, now president of Italian club Internazionale says. “But it has always been played with respect. We consider England to be a great national team. I hope the people who go to the stadium get to enjoy a great semi-final.”
There will be bonhomie elsewhere too. Beckham has already been pictured at this World Cup exchanging pleasantries with his “old friend” Simeone. They cleared the air years ago — as indeed Beckham did with Scaloni, with whom he clashed in 2003 when they were rivals at Real Madrid and Deportivo La Coruna respectively, leading the former England captain to describe him as “another Argentinian who doesn’t like me”.
“I’ve not yet met up with David (Beckham),” Zanetti says. “But I’m sure I’ll see him on Wednesday. I’ll give him a big hug because there’s great respect between us both. The photo Diego (Simeone) and David took together in Miami, that’s the beauty of football. In my opinion football is about bringing people together, uniting people regardless of rivalry.”
In theory, yes — and in many ways the World Cup is the perfect illustration of that, bringing nations together by pitting them against each other.
But within that celebration of global unity, there are fault lines, where every meeting has the feel of a seismic event. It is, as Scaloni says, a football match, nothing more. But that is exactly what Maradona said 40 years ago.
Watch highlights of the key games on YouTube
1966 – England 1 Argentina 0
1986 – Argentina 2 England 1
1998 – Argentina 2 England 2 (Arg win 4-3 on pens)
2002 – Argentina 0 England 1