When blood runs blue and white: Argentina and England renew soccer’s bitterest rivalry - opinion

There's something about the World Cup that brings out the best and the worst in people. For a month, the whole world unites around the same beautiful, chaotic sport: strangers hugging in bars over a shared offside call, entire countries shutting down for ninety minutes.

And then the tournament narrows, the stakes sharpen, and the oldest, most vicious rivalries start crawling back out of the woodwork. There is perhaps no rivalry more painful, more loaded, more delightfully unhinged than Argentina and England. And this Wednesday, for a place in the World Cup final, we get it again.

The moment I saw the semi-final draw, I felt it happen: a switch flipping somewhere behind my ribs. England vs. Argentina. And just like that, the mild-mannered, reasonable version of me packed her bags and left town.

As an Argentine, every four years, when the World Cup comes around, my blood suddenly and completely begins to run in the blue and white of my ancestors, without fail. Every other part of my identity becomes replaced by a single-minded, borderline unhinged devotion to eleven men in light blue stripes.

But now that Argentina will be facing England, the situation is undoubtedly more precarious. I've had to warn my British friends: tread carefully.

For the next two days, say "Falklands" at your own risk. I will hear you out, nod politely, and then, somewhere behind my eyes, quietly plot your soccer destruction.

It's a joke. Mostly. But like most good jokes, it's built on something real, because this fixture doesn't really do "just a soccer game," no matter how badly Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni wants it to.

Forty years in the making

Wednesday's semi-final in Atlanta lands almost exactly forty years after the match this rivalry is actually remembered for: the 1986 quarter-final at the Azteca Stadium, four years removed from the Falklands War. That's when Argentine legend Diego Maradona scored his infamous "Hand of God" goal. He's widely believed to have punched the ball into the net, but the referee didn't see it. Minutes later, Maradona scored arguably the greatest solo goal the World Cup has ever seen. Argentina won 2-1. England never really got over it, and Argentina never really let them.

That match wasn't the beginning, though. Twenty years earlier, at the 1966 World Cup, the one England actually won, Argentina captain Antonio Rattín was sent off in a bad-tempered quarter-final, and English manager Alf Ramsey reportedly described the Argentine players as "animals" afterward. It set a tone that neither side has quite shaken since: mutual respect, laced with mutual suspicion.

Then there was 1998, a Round of 16 classic where a teenage Michael Owen scored a wondergoal, David Beckham was sent off for a reckless kick at an Argentine defender, and England, down to ten men, still somehow took Argentina to penalties, and lost. Four years later, at the 2002 World Cup, Beckham got his redemption: a penalty against Argentina in the group stage that England held on to win.

And then, remarkably, given the history, almost nothing. A single, forgettable friendly in Geneva in 2005 is the last time these two teams actually met. For a rivalry this loaded, they've spent most of the last twenty years circling each other rather than colliding.

Which is exactly why Wednesday matters so much. Lionel Messi, in a career that has swallowed up every trophy and record soccer has to offer, has never once played England at a World Cup. That alone tells you how rare, and how overdue, this collision is.

More than a scoreline

None of this history exists in a vacuum, and everyone involved knows it. The Falklands, Las Malvinas to Argentina, remain a live wound: a war fought in 1982 over a set of islands in the South Atlantic that Argentina still claims as its own, and Britain still governs. It's not ancient history. It's a sovereignty dispute that never fully resolved, and just went quiet. But every time these two soccer teams share a pitch, that quiet gets a little louder.

Scaloni, for his part, is doing his best to keep politics off the scoresheet. "The message is this is a soccer game," he said after Argentina's 3-1 extra-time win over Switzerland. "It is a soccer game and we will be playing against a very tough opponent... and that's all." It's the right thing for a coach to say. It's also, frankly, a losing battle, because for two nations with this particular history, there's no such thing as "just" a soccer game against each other.

For Argentina, a win keeps alive the extraordinary possibility of back-to-back World Cup titles, something no team has managed since Brazil in 1962, and hands Messi the one World Cup scalp that's eluded him for two decades. For England, a win will be the first major trophy in sixty years. Thomas Tuchel wasn't shy about how nervy Saturday's extra-time win over Norway actually was. "We were very lucky today," he admitted. England will need to be considerably better than lucky against this Argentina side.

Whoever wins meets the victor of France-Spain in the final on July 19.

As for me, I'll be watching every second of it wrapped in light blue and white, mate in hand, treating my English friends with the kind of exaggerated, theatrical caution usually reserved for family at a holiday dinner where everyone knows better than to bring up politics. We'll all survive it. Probably. Vamos, Argentina.