World Cup: Argentina, England renew soccer's greatest, bitterest rivalry

Diego Maradona’s genius and gifts were matched only by his appetites and demons, his off-the-field excesses as legendary as his brilliance on the pitch.

The Argentine superstar who routinely did the seemingly impossible with a soccer ball also thought nothing of partying with Pablo Escobar at La Catedral, the luxurious, private prison the drug lord designed for himself in the Colombian mountains.

“We had a party with the best girls I've ever seen in my life,” Maradona recalled.

So the discipline Maradona showed in staying on message in the days leading up to Argentina’s 1986 World Cup quarterfinal with England at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca, the teams’ first meeting since the Falklands War four earlier, was remarkable.

The 74-day war was Great Britain’s response to Argentina’s invasion and occupation in April 1982 of the Falkland Islands – Guerra de las Malvinas to the Argentines – and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Overseas Territories in the South Atlantic. The war left 649 Argentine military peronnel dead, many of them like the Argentine players, young men in their early to mid-20s, some of them acquaintances or even friends of World Cup squad members.

“I don’t talk about politics,” Maradona told reporters when asked the match’s geopolitical significance. “No, no, no. I play football. No politics.”

But as Argentina’s captain led his team out that Sunday afternoon onto the pitch of the esteemed Mexican landmark, he made no attempt to conceal his true feelings.

“We were walking towards the pitch and Diego said, ‘Vamos, eh! Vamos (Come on, eh! Let’s go). These guys killed who knows how many of our boys. Vamos, eh!‘” said Jose Luis Brown, a central defender on the 1986 Argentine World Cup squad, recalling the 2-1 victory against England for the 2016 documentary “The Impossible Champion.”

“When the national anthem ended, you could’ve put anyone in front of me and I would’ve devoured them.”

Argentina, the reigning World Cup champion, and England, seeking to recapture a trophy that has eluded it for 60 years, renew the biggest, bitterest and most intense rivalry in the planet’s most popular sport in a semifinal match Wednesday at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium for spot in Sunday’s tournament final and so much more.

“Obviously, outside the ​four lines ⁠of the pitch,” said Argentina forward Jose Manuel Lopez, “it’s a matchup that has a lot of history, a lot of pain, and a lot behind it.”

That history includes the World Cup’s most infamous moment and what FIFA selected as the Goal of the Century. A history repeatedly marked by controversy, one that hounded England midfielder David Beckham for four years, another that haunts former Argentina defender and current U.S. national team coach Mauricio Pochettino to this day. Yet another controversy in the rivalry’s early years was so toxic that it forced FIFA to adopt the yellow and red card system. And a history that, according to Maradona, has even been touched by divine intervention.

‘The Fourth Star’

The rivalry, all of its pride and rage and heartbreak, courses through England and Argentina, their histories, politics, culture, literature and song morphing into a passion play for two countries that has seen the world’s game at its best and its worst, with Maradona delivering both in a four-minute stretch that afternoon 40 years ago at the Azteca.

In the 51st minute, Maradona, all 5 foot 5 of him, and England goalkeeper Peter Shelton leaped for a ball in the 18-yard box. Maradona couldn’t quite reach the cross with his head so instead deftly punched ball over Shilton into the goal. The biggest moment of infamy in soccer, maybe sports, history became known as the “Hand of God” goal.

Four minutes later, Maradona, with his back to the goal, received the ball at his feet roughly 10 meters on the Argentine side of the midfield line, then with 11 touches in 11 seconds, slalomed through six England defenders before sliding the ball past Shilton.

“This one will be remembered for a long, long time for reasons vastly different than the first,” BBC commentator Barry Davies said as Maradona celebrated.

“The greatest goal ever scored,” England forward Gary Lineker said.

Forty years later, Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni tried to take a prematch approach similar to Maradona’s.

“The message is this is a football game. That’s what I can say?” Scaloni insisted referring to the showdown with England after Argentina’s 3-1 extra-time quarterfinal victory against 10-man Switzerland in Kansas City. “It is a football game and we will be playing against a very tough opponent. They have an excellent coach and this is a football game and that’s all.”

Yet as Scaloni spoke to reporters, his players were in their Arrowhead Stadium dressing room celebrating by singing an obscenity-laced version of “La Cuarta Estrella,” the country’s World Cup anthem also known as “The Fourth Star” that promises to deliver a fourth title for “Las Malvinas, por Diego [Maradona] and por la ultima de Leo (Messi).”

Which translates to: “For the Falklands, for Diego and for Leo's last.”

A rivalry born

Soccer was introduced to Argentina in the 1860s by English and Scottish immigrants working in South America for British railroad companies. Thomas and James Hogg, natives of Yorkshire, in May 1867 organized the Buenos Aires Football Club, the country’s first soccer club. A month later, two teams made up of British railroad workers played the country’s first match.

Argentina was the first team other than Scotland to play England at Wembley Stadium, a crowd of 99,000 showing up for the Three Lions’ 2-1 victory against the South Americans on May 9, 1951.

A crowd of 91,000, at the time the most ever to watch a match in Argentina, showed up for the return match at Buenos Aires’ Estadio Monumental two years later, only to have the game abandoned after 36 minutes because of heavy rain.

England and Argentina first met in a World Cup at the 1962 tournament in Chile, an 3-1 England victory in the group stage sending Argentina out of the tournament.

They played again four years later in the quarterfinals of the 1966 World Cup in England, a match that stands out in tournament history for the Argentines’ dangerous play and the rule change it would prompt.

Geoff Hurst’s goal was the difference in a 1-0 England win. But the Argentines argued Hurst was offside and to this day refer to the match as El Robo del Siglo – or The Theft of the Century.

Argentina captain Antonio Rattin was cautioned early in the match by West German referee Rudolf Kreitlein for a dangerous lunge at England’s Bobby Charlton. He received a second caution for arguing with Kreitlein after the referee called another Argentine player for a foul. Rattin said he was merely trying to make his case and had asked for an interpreter. Kreitlein later said Rattin picked up the second caution and an automatic ejection for “violence of the tongue,” although the German did not speak Spanish.

Rattin refused to exit the field even after the tournament supervisor of referees entered the pitch to try to persuade the Argentine captain to leave. For a time he sat defiantly on the red carpet that had been rolled out for Queen Elizabeth in front of the royal box before finally being escorted off the pitch by police, crumpling up a corner flag featuring the Union Jack as he left.

England went on to win the World Cup and FIFA implemented the yellow and red card system to avoid any confusion about when a player had been cautioned. England manager Sir Alf Ramsey was so enraged by the Rattin incident and the Argentines’ cynical and brutal tactics that he refused to let England players participate in the traditional postmatch exchange of jerseys.

“Animals,” is how Ramsey described the Argentina players after the match. England went on to win the World Cup, defeating West Germany in the final.

Rattin died Saturday at 89. Argentina players wore black arm bands against Switzerland in his honor.

The toll of triumph

England failed to qualify for the 1974 and 1978 World Cups. The 1978 World Cup was hosted by Argentina and the tournament came two years after a military dictatorship led by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla took control of the country following a coup. The tournament was played in the midst of what would became known as the “Dirty War,” in which the Videla regime brutally tortured and murdered political opponents including students, trade union members, artists, journalists and suspected communist sympathizers. Between 15,000 and 30,000 Argentine citizens were murdered by the regime, according to Amnesty International.

Declassified documents by the U.S. National Defense Archive later showed that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger immediately ordered American support of the Videla regime despite State and Defense department warnings of the dictator’s likely tactics. Within hours of the coup, Kissinger’s top Latin American affairs aide told him “we’ve got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long.”

Argentina beat Netherlands in the World Cup final held at El Monumental, only a short walk from the Navy School of Mechanics where the Videla regime carried out much of their murders and torture. Between 1976 and 1983, 5,000 prisoners were held at the school. Only 150 survived. The survivors later recounted how they could hear the roar of the crowd at El Monumental on the night of the final.

“To many people, the World Cup in 1978 means 30,000 disappeared,” Ubaldo Fillol, the starting goalkeeper on the 1978 World Cup team, later said. “But none of us tortured or killed anyone. We just helped the country to have a little bit of joy and we defended the Argentine colors with bravery. I cannot be ashamed of that.”

One of the biggest controversies in the Argentine media before the tournament was the decision by Argentina’s chain-smoking coach, Cesar Luis Menotti, to leave then-17-year-old Maradona off the World Cup roster.

Demigod and Dirty War

England got its first glimpse of Maradona two years later in a May 1980 friendly at Wembley. England won 3-1, but the 19-year-old was so brilliant that the Sunday Times devoted a full page in its “A” section to the wunderkind known as “El Pibe de Oro,” which translates to “The Golden Boy,” a few days later.

“Prima Maradona” read the headline of a story that went on to say “About once in 20 years a footballer of genius emerges. The last was Pele, the great Brazilian player. Now there is another – Diego Maradona of Argentina.”

In December 1981, General Leopoldo Galtieri became head of the military junta continuing to run Argentina. Faced with a major economic crisis and increasing unrest in opposition to the Dirty War, Galtieri and Admiral Jorge Anaya came up with a plan that they thought would be a distraction of the regime’s domestic problems and create a rallying point that unite the nation: taking over the Falklands.

Argentina long considered the islands Argentine territory even though the Falklands had been Crown colonies since 1841. On April 2, 1982, amphibious Argentine forces invaded the Falklands as part of Operation Rosario. Galtieri and Anaya thought the British would not respond militarily.

But the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her government did respond with force. By the beginning of May, the British had the upper hand. On May 2, British torpedoes sank the ARA General Belgrano, an Argentine navy light cruiser, killing 321 sailors.

In the end, 649 Argentines died, 1,657 were wounded and 11,313 military personnel were captured by the British.

It was against the backdrop of the war that Argentina prepared to defend its World Cup title in Spain. In matches leading up to the tournament, the Argentine team posed with a banner that read “Las Malvinas son Argentines.”

The Falklands are Argentina’s.

The war especially impacted Argentina midfielder Osvaldo Ardiles, a hero of the 1978 World Cup triumph. A few weeks after Argentina beat Netherlands in the final that year, Ardiles and teammate Ricky Villa were two of the first foreign players to join teams in England’s First Division, signing with London’s Tottenham Hotspur. When Tottenham won the 1981 FA Cup, Spurs players celebrated by singing “Ossie’s Dream,” a fan favorite.

Ardiles’ cousin, José, was flying an Argentine fighter jet when he was shot down and killed by a British Sea Harrier on May 1 in one of the war’s first air battles. Tottenham loaned Ardilles to Paris Saint-Germain for the 1982-83 season because of concerns for his safety in England.

Divine interventions

Argentina lost to Belgium 1-0 in the World Cup’s opening match on June 13, 1982. A day later, Argentina surrendered to the British. Argentina’s World Cup defense ended with a second loss to Brazil in which Maradona was ejected for kicking an opponent in the groin.

The Falklands War and the disappointment of the 1982 tournament were still fresh when England and Argentina met in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinals before 114,580 at Estadio Azteca on June 22. Four of the Argentine players who played against England that day had either just completed their mandatory military service, were in the military or were recalled when the war broke out.

“I had my hair cut again and I had to go back to barracks every day to sign that I was available for the war,” Argentina forward Jorge Burruchaga, scorer of the winning goal in the 1986 World Cup final against West Germany, told author Andres Burgo for his book, “El Partido“, about the match.

“Do you know how many times I thought I would be going to war?” Burruchaga continued. “After it finished I kept going to the barracks, and we used to ask after the other conscripts: ‘Do you remember so-and-so? He died.’ ‘And the other guy?’ ‘Dead too.’”

After a scoreless opening half, Maradona tried to play a 1-2 with teammate Jorge Valdano. Instead, England midfielder Steve Hodge got to Maradona’s pass first. But Hodge miskicked the ball, sending it looping high into the penalty area. Shilton charged out to punch the ball away before Maradona, eight inches shorter than England’s goalkeeper, beat him to the punch, his left hand directing the ball into the goal. Maradona’s action seemed to be clear to everyone but match referee Ali Bin Nasser of Tunisia.

“I was waiting for my teammates to embrace me, and no one came,” Maradona recalled years later. “I told them, ‘Come hug me, or the referee isn’t going to allow it.’”

After the match, an Argentine reporter for an Italian news agency questioned Maradona on the play.

“Come on, Diego. It's clear that you used your hand,” the reporter said to Maradona.

“No, it was my head,” Maradona answered.

The reporter continued to press him.

“Maybe it was the hand of God,” the reporter said.

“Maybe it was,” Maradona responded.

A few minutes later, Maradona told reporters that the goal was “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.”

A second goal four minutes later was all Maradona.

After receiving the ball, Maradona spun around between a pair of England defenders, then flicked the ball to his right and then took off on a 68-meter run through four England players, passing central defender Terry Butcher, then stepping around Shilton 7 meters off the goal line to slide the ball inside the near post.

“He’s going to pass it to Diego, there’s Maradona with it, two men on him, Maradona steps on the ball, there goes down the right flank the genius of world football, he leaves the wing and he’s going to pass it to Burruchaga,” went the call of legendary Uruguayan announcer Victor Hugo Morales.

“Still Maradona! Genius! Genius! Genius! There, there, there, there, there, there! Goaaaaaaaal! Goaaaaaaal! I want to cry, oh holy God, long live football! What a goal! Diegoal! Maradona! It is to cry for, excuse me! Maradona, in a memorable run, in the best play of all time! Cosmic kite, what planet did you come from, to leave so many Englishmen behind, for the country to be a clenched fist crying for Argentina? Argentina 2, England 0! Diegoal, Diegoal, Diego Armando Maradona! Thank you, God, for football, for Maradona, for these tears, for this Argentina 2, England 0.”

Kick in the gut

In less than five minutes, Maradona had produced the two most famous goals in World Cup history and, with the second, the greatest goal the 20th century had witnessed.

“I honestly, genuinely thought for the first time ever in a football pitch, playing against another team, I really should applaud,” Lineker recently said of Maradona’s second goal.

In his 2000 autobiography, “I Am El Diego,” Maradona wrote: “Sometimes I feel that I liked the one with the hand more, the first goal. Now I can reveal what I couldn't in that moment, what I had defined at the time as the Hand of God. What hand of God? It was the hand of El Diego! And it was like stealing the English's wallet, too.”

He also revealed his true feelings in the book about the rivalry and the larger significance of the 1986 match to him, to his country.

“It was like beating a country, not a football team. Although we said before the game that football had nothing to do with the Malvinas War, we knew that a lot of Argentine kids had died there, that they had mowed us down like little birds,” he wrote. “This was our revenge, it was … recovering a part of the Malvinas. We all said beforehand that we shouldn’t mix the two things but that was a lie. A lie! We didn’t think of anything except that, like hell it was going to be just another game!”

Neither would be the teams’ next World Cup meeting in the second round of France ’98.

The morning of the match at Saint-Etienne’s Stade Geoffroy-Guichard, adidas took out full-page ads in English tabloids that read “After Tonight England V. Argentina Will Be Remembered For What A Player Did With His Feet. “

The player pictured was Beckham in the ad.

The ad would prove to be prophetic.

After the teams traded goals on penalty kicks, England forward Michael Owen, only 18, blew past a pair of defenders on a long run and then blasted a shot past goalkeeper Carlos Roa from outside the penalty area in the 16th minute. In 2002, FIFA ranked Owen’s goal second only to Maradona’s strike in World Cup history.

After Argentina scored an equalizer in first-half stoppage time, Beckham was tripped by Diego Simeone, who then rubbed his knuckles over the England star’s head. Beckham, still face down on the ground, flicked his right foot back hitting Simeone in the leg. With the referee standing right there, Simeone dropped to the ground, rolling around in apparent agony. England played the final 43 minutes plus extra time a man down.

The Three Lions thought they had won in the closing moments of the match on a Sol Campbell goal, only to have it waved off because of a foul leading up to the play. Argentina eventually won in a penalty kick shootout.

The headline in The Daily Mirror the following day was “10 Heroic Lions, One Stupid Boy.”

Beckham at the time was engaged to Victoria Adams, better known as Posh Spice. One chat-show host cracked that Beckham was also going to join the Spice Girls and be known as Stupid Spice. Beckham even received death threats.

England’s atonement

All of it came rushing back four years later as Beckham stood behind the penalty spot in the teams’ 2002 World Cup first-round match in Sapporo, Japan, the whole world watching, with England and Argentina a minute from halftime and redemption 12 yards away.

He kicked his right foot into the turf in anticipation. Simeone tried to approach him but was pushed away. And then they were back.

”Flashbacks from four years ago,” Beckham said.

In the days leading up to the most-anticipated match of the 2002 tournament, billed as Falklands IV, Simeone confessed to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy’s pink-paged national sports daily, that Beckham’s torment was the result of play acting.

“In reality, it was not a violent blow,” Simeone said.

Beckham paused for another moment.

”I had to try and get some air,” he said, ”because at some point I think I almost stopped breathing.”

Beckham drew in a deep breath then sent a penalty kick nearly directly down the middle, past Argentina goalkeeper Pablo Cavallero diving to his right, four years of ghosts finally laid to rest in the back of the net.

”It’s unbelievable,” Beckham said. ”It’s been four years, it’s been a long four years. It’s been up and down, but this has topped it all off.”

The only goal in a 1-0 England victory that led to Argentina getting knocked out of the tournament in the first round was the result of Italian referee Pierluigi Collina ruling that defender Mauricio Pochettino – now known as the coach of the United States men’s national team – had tripped Owen in the penalty area. Replays suggest that, with today’s VAR system, Collina’s call would have been overturned.

“After that, I suffered a massive depression,” Pochettino said.

Years later, when Pochettino was managing Southampton in England’s Premier League, he learned that Owen, then a TV commentator, was visiting the club. Pochettino found a photo that showed he hadn’t fouled Owen and asked the England star to sign it.

“You definitely touched me,” Owen wrote next his drawing of a smiley face.

“I know very well what it’s like to play in a World Cup,” Pochettino said recently. “I know disappointment.”

And now England and Argentina meet again in a World Cup against the backdrop of all that has preceded it, a history too big to be contained within the white lines of a pitch, the ghosts of the Falklands and Maradona.

As Lionel Messi and his Argentine teammates rode the bus to the 2022 World Cup final against France, they sang “Muchachos,” which begins “I was born in Argentina/ Land of Diego and Lionel/ of the Malvinas boys/ whom I will never forget.”

Maradona never did.

He turned 60 the day before Halloween in 2020. Severely overweight, plagued by a series of health issues and in and out of rehab and hospitals for years, Maradona and his hard-partying days were a thing of the past.

A recent exposure to a friend with COVID-19 forced him to spend his birthday in isolation, mere weeks before would be dead following emergency brain surgery.

Did he have a birthday wish, Maradona was asked.

He smiled.

“I wish,” he said “I could score against England again. This time with my right hand.”

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