Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine writer, once dismissed football with disdain, saying it was popular because ‘stupidity is popular.’
It was perhaps the most futile act of resistance in Argentine cultural history.
Buenos Aires simply carried on loving football. It argued over it in cafes, lived through it on Sundays and organised entire neighbourhoods around it. As football writer Jonathan Wilson notes in Angels with Dirty Faces, football became the city’s common language, discussing the seriousness of politics and the intimacy of family.
London’s relationship with the game is no less profound, only expressed differently. If Buenos Aires made football the subject of endless conversation, London made it part of the city’s fabric. Every weekend, the Underground is taken over by the supporters, each line heading towards a different corner of the English capital, where clubs have come to embody neighbourhoods and traditions.
One city debates football as an idea; the other lives it through institutions that have shaped the modern game.
Which is why England against Argentina has always been about more than history. Behind the familiar prism of war, politics and Diego Maradona lies another, richer contest – between two great football cultures, represented by their capitals.