Argentina rises and shines after England fall asleep
June 5, 2002
AN ADVERT running on Argentine television before the match against Nigeria showed two desperate fans in a ramshackle hut in Africa, plotting the downfall of the World Cup favourites. After one sticks a pin into a straw doll dressed in the famous blue and white striped shirt, a message appears on the screen: “Go Argentina, everyone fears us!” In reality, Sven-Göran Eriksson is as unlikely to begin practising black magic as the Nigerians — Argentina would never win a Mundial for political correctness. Yet when he took the job on, the England head coach cannot have imagined kissing an image of David Beckham’s foot in a bid to heal a broken metatarsal, either. Unless his team raises its game dramatically in Sapporo on Friday, even the collective prayers of a nation will not save England from humiliation.
Most Argentina fans, exhausted from celebrating Gabriel Batistuta’s winner against Nigeria on Sunday, were tucked up in bed when England kicked off against Sweden at 6.30am Buenos Aires time.
The Times
Any Anglo-Argentinians or ex-pats in the few cafés still open were probably glad that they could at least suffer alone. The performance was agony enough without being compounded by the sneers of locals feeling justifiably superior after their side’s confident start. Even the Argentine commentator felt sorry for the team in white. He generously described England’s play in the final 20 minutes as “desorientado”, although I may have missed the Spanish for “headless chickens”. The insipid 1-1 draw against Sweden in Saitama could not remain a secret for long. Broadcasters had promised a month of “total futbol” and Sunday’s combination of an Argentina victory and English embarrassment proved irresistible.
Argentinians could choose between watching England’s criminal surrender of possession on a repeated-as-live programme or a highlights package. World Cup shows never seem to be off the air in Argentina. Coverage ranged from serious analysis by former players of Danny Mills’s costly blunder to vigorous debate over Beckham’s health and hairstyle, complete with scantily clad women posing in the background à la The Fast Show’s spoof of Latin American news.
Overall, the Argentine media’s reaction has been more restrained than one might expect, given the history between the countries on and off the pitch. “Se Durmio”, or “England falls asleep”, was the verdict of the broadsheet La Nación on its website. “Sweden should have won by three goals,” my taxi driver declared gleefully a few hours after the final whistle. “Argentina will win easily on Friday.” Yet the Argentine papers are holding back, in a way that the British tabloids might struggle to emulate, because they know nothing can be taken for granted.
Juan Fazzini, a TV and radio presenter who has covered every World Cup since 1970, said that England traditionally raise their game against Argentina. “It’s always a difficult game, always,” he said. “In the past, and today, Argentina, player to player, has been better . . . but it’s a classic game.” And if Argentina lose? “Here, it will hurt a lot.”
Eric Wail, a Lancastrian who has worked for English-speaking newspapers in Buenos Aires for half a century — he has just retired as Sports Editor of the Buenos Aires Herald — and who was in the crowd at the first England-Argentina clash at Wembley in 1951, believes that the Argentinians are inspired by a desire to beat the country that they regard as the “masters and inventors of the game”. He considers Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal and Beckham’s sending-off, more than the Falklands War, is what now keeps the footballing rivalry so intense. Speaking before England’s opening match, he thought the meeting on Friday could go either way. “It’s always been close and it’s always been controversial,” he said.
The prospect of playing against Juan Sebastián Verón and company in a match you must win is enough to inspire fear. Yet despairing England fans can at least take heart from an online advert in Argentina which urges browsers to pray that El Spice Boy is not fit enough to play. Beneath a white flag, on which the St George’s Cross has been reduced to resemble the symbol of the Red Cross, are the words: “Que no juegue Beckham”, together with a fingers-crossed icon.