"Can a football match have as much weight as a war?"

BarcelonaOn June 13, 1982, the Argentine national team debuted in the Spanish World Cup. The opening match was played at Camp Nou in Barcelona and the opponent was Belgium. "We had arrived a few days earlier. At that time, we were at war with the United Kingdom, the Falklands War. When we left Buenos Aires, the press said we were winning the war. When we arrived in Spain, the press said we were losing it," recalls Jorge Valdano, an Argentine player. Argentina would lose the match 0-1 and just one day later, on June 14, the Argentine army surrendered: it had lost the war. Two defeats in 24 hours.

Argentina and England face each other in the semifinals of this World Cup, a duel that opens the old pages of history books. Few matches in a World Cup can be charged with as much symbolism as this one. A duel that pits two teams that compete at a sporting level, but where to understand its dimension, one must talk about politics and national identity. "You can't talk about this match without mentioning the Falklands, especially for Argentinians," explains Valdano. In 1982, Argentina was living through the final months of a military dictatorship. The economic crisis and the crimes against humanity ordered by those soulless uniformed men were cracking the regime. The generals, therefore, opted for an old tactic to try to continue in power: unite the population by seeking external enemies. First, they were one step away from starting a war against Chile. Then they turned their gaze east, where the Falkland Islands are located. Or Malvinas, as the British call them. Islands in the middle of the Atlantic, cold, with few inhabitants, but of great strategic value. In April 1982, the Argentinians invaded them. They hoisted their flag and imposed Spanish as the official language. Port Stanley, the capital, was renamed Puerto Argentino.

Since the islands were so far from the United Kingdom, they thought the British would not try to reclaim them. But in London, the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, was in power, who also had internal problems with unemployment and privatizations. Despite the logistical complexity, the British recovered them. Their military superiority was evident. The Argentine troops, made up of poorly trained and ill-equipped young men, did what they could. "One thing is war and a very different thing is the Malvinas issue," explained writer Eduardo Sacheri this week. "Different generations of Argentines have grown up with the clear understanding that the Malvinas are Argentine. People don't doubt it. This claim is internalized. But war is something else, because we know how the military lied. And they sent hundreds of young people to the slaughterhouse," he says. The defeat ended the military dictatorship. In contrast, it electorally strengthened Thatcher.

And just four years after the end of the war, as Argentine democracy took its first insecure steps, the match was played. That quarter-final duel of the Mexico World Cup, the match that has generated more literature in the history of football. "For Argentinians it was revenge for the war. Can a football match have as much symbolic weight as a war? It happens to us. For Argentina it would have been unbearable to lose that match, as we had lost the war. For them it was different," reasons Valdano. It is difficult to understand from a distance what that match means to Argentinians, to which songs, documentaries, books, and a philosophy essay have been dedicated. It was the most special match, as Diego Armando Maradona eliminated the English at the Azteca Stadium with two goals in just four minutes (2-1). One he would score by cheating, as he did it with his hand. The second was surely the most beautiful of all, in an immortal play where he went around tricking Englishmen all over the pitch, as Victor Hugo Morales would explain in his iconic narration. "The match against England, with the passage of time, has achieved a greater dimension than the final where we were champions. It has been mythologized for its symbolic value. Maradona's shirt against England was auctioned for 8 million dollars and the one he wore in the final was sold for 300,000 dollars...", says Valdano.

The fact that Maradona scored a goal with his hand, cheating with the famous hand of God, ended up greatly aggravating the wound between the two teams. "He cheated, he was a cheat," goalkeeper Peter Shilton continues to complain. For the Argentinians, scoring a goal with his hand made it sweeter, as "according to the Argentinians, the British took the islands illegally. Therefore, if Maradona used his hand, it was a way of returning the blow of what they had done," argues Sacheri, author of a beautiful text where he explains how he watched the match with the family of a girlfriend he had. Because all Argentinians and English people remember where they were on June 22, 1986. "He scored the other goal by playing to show that he could also defeat them by playing if he wanted to," adds the writer.

The English accuse the Argentinians of being capable of anything to win and of having no ethics. It would not help that in 1998, when they met again in the round of 16 of the World Cup in France, Diego Pablo Simeone faked a foul to get David Beckham sent off. The Argentinians would triumph again, although in 2002 the victory would be English with a goal precisely from Beckham. Since then, they have not met in a World Cup. And now they do so on the eve of the final, with Messi on the pitch and with Argentinians singing that if they have to win the World Cup, it must be to remember the "pibes of the Malvinas", those young men sent to their deaths by Argentine military. Young men like Javier Dolard, a war veteran who in the magnificent documentary El partido explains how on the day he surrendered, he started talking to a British soldier. "And right away we were talking about football. We talked about Maradona and Kevin Keegan. And that Englishman admitted to me that Maradona was incredible." As English ex-player Gary Lineker says in the same documentary, "young people should play football with each other, not go and die as soldiers." In the end, "it's just a football match" as Argentine coach Lionel Scaloni stated before the match. A football match. But a very special one, in this case.