Monday, July 13th 2026 - 15:45 UTC
“We are going to play against a great team, with a great coach, whom I appreciate and admire greatly. It's a football match, full stop. There's nothing more to it,” he added
Argentina's head coach, Lionel Scaloni, rejected attributing any meaning beyond sport to the World Cup semifinal against England, to be played on Wednesday, and urged that the match be treated as just another game of football.
Asked at a news conference what message he would give to fans anxious about the match, Scaloni cut the question short. “It's a football match. The message is that it's a football match. Let's not look for anything else,” he replied. “We are going to play against a great team, with a great coach, whom I appreciate and admire greatly. It's a football match, full stop. There's nothing more to it,” he added, referring to England manager Thomas Tuchel. The coach also said the opponent made no difference to him: “It doesn't matter whether it's England or Norway.”
The remarks were aimed at defusing the symbolic weight that surrounds matches against England in Argentina, linked to the 1982 South Atlantic conflict and to the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal in Mexico, exactly forty years ago, in which Diego Maradona scored the two goals that sealed Argentina's 2-1 win.
