With all due respect to the two teams at the very top of the global rankings, Spain’s 2-0 win over France Tuesday was the amuse-bouche to the hearty entrée that’s in store when the Falklands War v. 2.0 boots up 24 hours later.If ticket pricing is any indication, interest in the upcoming England-Argentina World Cup semifinal is roughly twice as feverish as that for the early border dispute, with the cheapest seat available via resale sites for Lionel Messi’s tangle with Harry Kane’s squad holding firm at $2,629—well north of the $1,284 it cost to grab one of the last remaining berths at AT&T Stadium for France-Spain.While the disparity between the two get-in prices won’t be replicated in the Nielsen data—we are in no way suggesting that the combined deliveries for Wednesday’s semifinal will be 105% higher than the TV turnout for the first match—Fox and Telemundo clearly have a blockbuster on their hands in England-Argentina. For one thing, the later game features Messi, who at the ripe old age of 39 is jousting with France’s Kylian Mbappé for the Golden Boot. An Argentina victory sends the GOAT to his third World Cup Final; should England prevail, the Three Lions will punch their ticket for the first time in 60 years.The unpleasantness of 1982 aside, the rivalry between England and Argentina is one of the most enduring in international sports. While most fans had yet to emerge as sentient beings when the Brits hoisted the Jules Rimet Trophy at Wembley in the summer of ‘66—the Beatles would release Revolver just six days later, making it one hell of a week for that Green and Pleasant Land—tens of millions can still recall England’s crushing 2-1 loss to Argentina in the 1986 quarterfinal at Estadio Azteca.If the Hand of God effectively flipped the bird to the English side—then as now, Diego Maradona’s first goal was farcically illegitimate—the Argentine captain’s subsequent score was something out of the divine intervention catalogue. Forty years after the fact, England has a once-in-a-lifetime chance at redemption … and as such, all eyes are going to be on Fox and Telemundo on Wednesday afternoon.Interest in the World Cup tends to flag upon the elimination of the U.S. team, but this year’s tournament seems destined to break every ratings record in the books. Per preliminary Nielsen data, England’s 2-1 extra-time victory over Norway averaged a record 19.48 million viewers on Fox this Saturday, making it the all-time most-watched quarterfinal match on an English-language network. The broadcast peaked at 24.65 million impressions in the 7:30 p.m. ET quarter-hour.The advance Nielsen estimates peg Fox’s subsequent Argentina-Switzerland deliveries at just shy of 16 million viewers, although both averages are expected to rise upon application of the final Big Data + Panel numbers. Prelims for Telemundo’s weekend coverage are not currently available; that said, Argentina has been a big draw for the Spanish-language network, with its July 3 extra-time win over scrappy Cape Verde averaging 10.6 million viewers.Telemundo’s top draw to date arrived courtesy of the July 5 Mexico-England match, which scared up a staggering 23.2 million viewers across the linear-TV network and Peacock. While it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of those who tuned into the broadcast were cheering on El Tri, England’s dismissal of Mexico should lead to a good deal of hate-watching on Wednesday afternoon. Given the intensity of the rivalry and the knowledge that every international match for which Messi suits up brings him inexorably nearer to his last, the combined U.S. audience for England-Argentina should clear the 35 million-viewer mark.(Of course, Messi swore he was hanging it up after Qatar and yet here he is. Given that Argentina will host one match in the 2030 World Cup, perhaps there’s an outside chance the 43-year-old version of the GOAT suits up for the next one? If so, Messi would only be the second-oldest man to play in a World Cup match, after Egyptian keeper Essam El Hadary set the record in 2018 at a creaky 45 years and 161 days.)Only one England player from ’66 still walks among us, as 84-year-old Geoff Hurst is the lone surviving member of the team that beat West Germany at Wembley all those years ago. The trophy itself is long gone, despite the valiant efforts of a border collie named “Pickles,” who’d discovered the pilfered object at the bottom of a hedge four months before the 1966 World Cup was set to kick off. The trophy had been stolen while on public display; despite Pickles’ heroics, the Rimet was disappeared for good from its bulletproof cabinet in Rio de Janeiro in 1983.