Argentina players belted out a chant in a Kansas City locker room after a victory Saturday that made clear that Wednesday's World Cup semifinal against England is about far more than a spot in the final. "For the Malvinas, and for Diego," they sang, invoking both the disputed Falkland Islands and soccer legend Diego Maradona—and signaling that, four decades after the 1986 World Cup and the 1982 Falklands War, the matchup still carries political and emotional charge back home. That 1986 quarterfinal, played four years after Britain defeated Argentina in the South Atlantic conflict, produced Maradona's infamous "Hand of God" goal and his "Goal of the Century" as Britain went down. "There was something like a form of historical justice, a historical revenge, achieved not through warfare but through football," Julia Rosemberg, a history professor at the University of Buenos Aires, tells the New York Times.
The layers have only thickened between what CBS News calls "bitter rivals." Argentina's foreign minister used the lead-up to the game to proclaim, "Time does not transform an illegitimate occupation into sovereignty." Songs in the stands link the war dead, Maradona, and Lionel Messi's current quest for a fourth World Cup title (CBS notes that Wednesday's match marks the first time that Messi will face off against England). England's side of the rivalry still bristles at Maradona's illegal "Hand of God" handball, and some former players say they can't forgive him. As Maradona himself, who died in 2020, once put it: "I'm an ordinary guy who scored a great goal against the English, who killed our kids in Malvinas." Yet Argentine war veterans are split: one group urged fans not to turn the game into a surrogate battle, while another said Maradona's 1986 performance "already avenged us."
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