MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina/England is a “football match, and that’s it, let’s not look for something else”

Argentine coach Scaloni replying to an Argentine newsperson who defined Wednesday event as something special, “not only football wise but also emotionally”.

Despite some incidental issues, and ahead of the upcoming World Cup semifinal between England and Argentina this Wednesday, the Argentine coach downplayed all possible ‘Atlanta climate outbursts’ that could emerge referred to the Falklands/Malvinas dispute, (but that was not explicitly mentioned), by simply arguing that the clash “is a football match, and that is what it is…”

At a media conference in Kansas City following the match with Switzerland, Argentine coach Lionel Scaloni, and ahead of Wednesday, underlined, “it is a football match…let’s not look for something else”

Sccaloni was replying to an Argentine newsperson who defined Wednesday event as something special, “not only football wise but also emotionally, and asked what message can you (Scaloni) and the players give to all Argentines that are anxiously waiting?”

Scaloni reiterated, “It’s a football match okay…And we are going to play a football match against a great national team, which has a great manager whom I appreciate and admire a lot. And it is a football match And that is what it is, There is nothing more to it than that…”

But the situation and climate are not that simple.

In effect an Argentine local folklore singer released a song “The Fourth Star”, in direct reference to the fourth (Argentine) World Cup Championship plus the right to add a fourth star to the Argentine jersey above their federation’s emblem over their hearts. (Argentina has won the 1978, 1986 and 2022 World Cups).

Besides Argentine players have taken to celebrate after each victory, as they did on Saturday following the match against Switzerland chanting “For the Malvinas, for El Diego (Maradona) and for Leo’s last one (Messi’s last World Cup)”.

Likewise on Sunday, in Buenos Aires’ leading daily, La Nacion, the Argentine foreign minister Pablo Quirno wrote a piece, “Malvinas, la fuerza de una cause justa” again claiming sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, and in usual Argentine official rhetoric, ignoring the Falklands’ people, (some families have ten generations in the Islands) and their right to self-determination. Argentina does not consider Islanders a people since they were allegedly ‘artificially implanted’.