Post by ZACH Multimedia

#ZACHMultimediaHistoryMusea #ZACHMultimediaFIFAWorldCup2026 #FIFAWorldCup2026 Why the Anglo-Argentinian rivalry goes far deeper than football As their World Cup semi-final looms, the history between Britain and Argentina spans colonial wars, trade and shared sporting origins [Image - Collage of four images related to the Falklands War: a blue-tinted explosion, a smiling military general, a soccer player scoring a goal, and a newspaper cover featuring Margaret Thatcher with an eyepatch. Margaret Thatcher was frequently depicted as a pirate in Argentinian media, while it was during Juan Perón’s time in office that the first banners about the Falklands appeared. Right, Maradona’s controversial goal] By Dominic Sandbrook, The Times, 14 July 2026 ‘It’s a dream for us,” the Argentinian midfielder Leandro Paredes said in the early hours of Sunday morning after his team had advanced to play England in Wednesday’s hotly anticipated World Cup showdown. “Ever since we were kids, we dreamt of playing in a World Cup semi-final, and especially against England … We’re fully aware of what England means to our country.” Even by the standards of international sporting rivalries, the story of what England means to Argentina is unusually fascinating. Older readers may remember Argentina’s captain Antonio Rattín, who died at the weekend, being sent off at Wembley in 1966, which prompted England’s manager Alf Ramsey to claim that the Argentinians had behaved like “animals”. Readers of a more recent vintage will surely recall Diego Maradona’s “hand of God” in 1986, or David Beckham’s expulsion for kicking out at Diego Simeone 12 years later. And then, of course, there is the shadow of the Falklands — to this day an obsession in Argentina, where almost every town boasts billboards and posters proclaiming the South Americans’ claim to the Islas Malvinas, as they call them. When Argentina’s players chanted in victory on Sunday, their song’s opening words spoke volumes: “For the Malvinas.” But the tangled and fractious story of Anglo-Argentinian rivalry transcends the football field and began long before Buenos Aires’s ruling junta sent a task force to invade the islands in 1982. At a very basic level, it is an inheritance from South America’s original Spanish colonisers, who saw the English as unwelcome competitors for loot and territory. Today, on social media, you often see Argentinians denouncing the English as “pirates”, an insult that goes back to the days of Sir Francis Drake. And during the Falklands war, Argentinian periodicals depicted Margaret Thatcher with an eyepatch, a cutlass and, in one case, a fetching piratical hat. “Pirate, Witch and Assassin,” ran one headline in the magazine Tal Cual. “Guilty!” [Image- David Beckham kneeling next to Diego Simeone lying on the grass, during the 1998 Soccer World Cup]... ... https://lnkd.in/dhvjq7JU