At the beginning of the World Cup, undeterred by the Argentina hater-ism that has saturated the online air this tournament, my (American) boyfriend’s brother decided to become a fan of La Selección. In fandom, as in immigration policy—and as evidenced by videos of Argentine hinchas wrapping whomever in the Albiceleste and chanting “¡El [fill in the blank] es Argentiiino!”—we’ll take anyone. When the question of who is the country’s biggest rival came up, I didn’t hesitate: England! Without a doubt. Sure, there’s Brazil, but that’s more like a rivalry with a slightly older brother; there’s respect and love underneath all the envy and trash talk. And there’s Germany, too, though that particular enmity is colder and more clinical, and a result of chance fating the two nations to face each other more frequently than any other two countries in World Cup history.
With England, it’s different. There’s the political baggage of Malvinas, of course: a quick and deadly and undeclared war orchestrated by a military dictatorship as it lost its power. Through a mandatory draft, thousands of young Argentine men, most of them too poor to dodge, were sent to fight a war that was less about territory and more about restoring a sense of patriotism to distract people from the failures and atrocities of the Argentine state. “Si quieren venir, que vengan. Les presentaremos batalla,” head of the Junta (and infamous drunk) Leopoldo Galtieri taunted, while Margaret Thatcher famously quipped that she didn’t know the meaning of the word defeat. A lot of blustering, and then: almost all of the Argentine troops came back wounded; over 600 died; a British nuclear submarine sank an Argentine war ship, the ARA General Belgrano, in neutral waters; and Argentina surrendered and returned the contested islands to British control. All this over the course of about ten weeks in the fall or spring, depending on from which hemisphere you look at it, of 1982. The war defined a generation, and the long shadow of defeat colored the return of democracy to the nation.
Then, four years later: the Hand of God. A goal so improbable and its legitimacy or lack thereof, at least in the moment, so ambiguous that it could be nothing but revenge and ensuing rage. And then, four minutes later, the barrilete cósmico, or the Goal of the Century, or whatever you want to call it, Maradona emboldened by his own transgression, by having gotten away with it, charting a course through a field of Englishmen as if each movement were predestined. Final score: Argentina 2, England 1. It was poetic justice—the universe, for a moment, conspiring with desire to turn things out the way they were meant.
But before all of that: the British brought football to Argentina. A Scotsman founded what is now the Asociación del Fútbol Argentino (AFA); and British immigrants, many of them railroad workers, established and named some of the country’s best-known clubs; popularized the sport by bringing English teams such as Southampton and Nottingham Forest to play touring matches throughout the territory; filled stadiums with British players and staff and refs. In the beginning, football was mostly played in schools and other institutions belonging to the relatively small (and privileged) British population in Argentina. It went on like this for a few decades, until the start of the 20th century, when improved labor conditions, more free time for the working class and a massive influx of immigration from places like Italy and Spain spurred the creation of member clubs where the sport was taught and played. Football became fútbol. If it seems a bit on the nose, well, that’s because it is: in a country of Freudians, the biggest rival is the one who brought you into this world. The battle is fundamental, even oedipal: It’s about to whom this sport belongs.
Heading into the semifinal on Wednesday, Argentina has been staking its claim, but with difficulty. Being down 2–0 to Egypt in the 78th minute was not good for morale. The match against Switzerland was even worse; Messi disappearing into the background as the Swiss side predicted and effectively defended against his every move. The rest of the squad eventually showed up, but it took them a minute. “Primero hay que saber sufrir,” a refrain from Homero Expósito’s popular tango “Naranjo en Flor,” became a motto in 2022 and remains apt. The team has also picked up hordes of haters between then and now, people lured by asinine myths sanctioned by the U.S. State Department such as “Argentines are descended from Nazis;” by the paranoiac and cowardly practice of blaming the ref (augmented by the incorporation of VAR and its confounding, reality-bending mediation of time and movement); and by the small, private tragedy masquerading as magnanimity that is the loser mindset. Someone in a group chat I’m in said she was rooting against Messi because she “hates a winner.”
In his home country, Messi was reviled for years for the exact opposite reason: he played well for Barça but not for La Albiceleste; he failed to sentir la camiseta; he was un pecho frío. The team, titleless since the 1993 Copa América, kept coming home empty-handed, and there was no pinning it on the refs: if they lost, there was no one to blame but the players and, since they represented us, ourselves.
If La Scaloneta loses the semifinal, the inevitable wave of devastation that will crash upon Argentines all over the world will be driven by the fact of having lost to England, of course. Malvinas still figures prominently as a symbol in canciones de cancha—“por Malvinas, por el Diego, por la última de Leo,” goes the banner one this tournament—and the concept of robarle un gol al ladrón is as motivating as ever. They’re the historic enemy, the origin wound. But Argentina doesn’t just have to beat England. Argentina has to win. “En Argentina tenés que ganar” goes the stadium song whose refrain roughly translates to “win the championship again or we’ll kill you.” Fútbol is more than a sport, and as cliché as that sounds, it’s true. It structures life in Argentina both practically and emotionally. Clubs, even today, provide social spaces and services in ways that the state and private enterprises often fail to do. Children start watching and cheering before they even know what the songs or the teams mean. In an interview from before the Cup, current U.S. manager and former Albiceleste center-back Mauricio Pochettino said he kicked a ball before he even learned how to walk, that in fact he learned how to walk so that he could kick the ball. When my grandfather arrived in Buenos Aires from southern Italy at age 16, the workers at the mayonnaise factory where he worked told him he had to be a River Plate fan, and so he became one. In doing so, he also became an Argentine.
Our claim to the sport is a claim over greatness, over joy, over the will to keep going, by a people who have suffered unceasing crisis for the last forty years, whose current government has prioritized the deregulation of the market over their well-being, taken resources away from public hospitals and universities and retirees’ pensions, and, in cruelly apt and symbolic timing, is currently debating doing away with a law that caps at 15% the portion of national territory that can be owned by foreign entities.
At a recent press conference, someone asked Argentina’s manager, Lionel Scaloni, about the upcoming match against England and what message he had for Argentines. Scaloni cut the reporter off before he could finish and said, sternly, with the air of a fed-up dad or physical education teacher: “Es un partido de fútbol. No busquemos otra cosa.” That’s why it matters so much—because it is a football game. Regardless of what’s going on elsewhere, on the pitch, Argentina and Argentines can still win.