England will fancy this Argentina

They are dragging opponents into emotional trench warfare, where football becomes a test of nerve rather than quality.

Whether that is a weakness or their greatest strength remains unanswered. England will certainly have an opinion.

Wednesday’s World Cup semi-final no longer feels like another instalment of football’s oldest modern rivalry. Instead, it looks like a collision between a side growing into the tournament and another somehow reaching the last four while looking increasingly vulnerable.

Argentina defeated Switzerland 3-1 after extra time, but the scoreline concealed far more than it revealed. It suggested control, and the match delivered another escape.

That has become Argentina’s defining act.

Cape Verde cornered them. Egypt stretched them to the limit. Switzerland pushed them further still. Three entirely different opponents have all uncovered the same truth.

The defending champions can be shaken and can be frustrated. Above all, they can be dragged away from the fluent, authoritative football that once made them appear inevitable.

The remarkable part is what happens next: they never seem to break.

A champion with a glass jaw

This Argentina side possesses what boxers politely call a glass jaw. It absorbs punches that great champions are usually expected to avoid.

Yet every time the count reaches nine, somebody produces the decisive blow.

Against Switzerland, it was Julian Alvarez, against Egypt, others found the answers, and against Cape Verde, they escaped by the finest of margins.

The unbeaten World Cup run now stretches to 12 matches dating back to Qatar 2022, a statistic that suggests dominance. The performances tell a different story.

Lionel Scaloni’s team no longer dictate games for long periods. They surrender momentum too easily, invite pressure too readily and increasingly rely on individual brilliance instead of collective authority.

That is becoming a pattern rather than an accident. Switzerland merely confirmed it.

Alexis Mac Allister’s early header should have allowed Argentina to settle into familiar rhythm. Instead, the goal had the opposite effect.

Rather than building on their advantage, Argentina retreated into caution. Their passing became slower, their movement lost urgency, and their midfield stopped imposing itself on the contest.

The lead became something to protect rather than something to expand. That psychological shift has surfaced throughout this tournament.

The scoreline lied

Future generations will see a 3-1 victory and assume Argentina progressed comfortably. Nothing could be further from reality.

Dan Ndoye’s equaliser arrived because Switzerland sensed what previous opponents had sensed. Argentina were no longer controlling the match but reacting to it.

Then came the defining controversy. Breel Embolo’s dismissal for simulation, confirmed after a VAR review overturned the referee’s original decision, left Switzerland playing with 10 men for more than 45 minutes, including extra time.

Embolo left the field in tears. Switzerland refused to leave with him.

Even a numerical advantage failed to unlock them.

Argentina still needed a moment of exceptional quality before finally escaping. Alvarez’s magnificent curling strike from outside the area was less the winning goal than a jailbreak.

Lautaro Martínez’s late finish merely polished a scoreline that never reflected the balance of the contest.

England’s analysts will surely spend more time studying the first 112 minutes than the final eight.

Three warnings, one pattern

Cape Verde. Egypt. Switzerland.

Different styles. Different tactical approaches. Different levels of expectation.

The same outcome.

Each discovered that Argentina become strangely passive after taking the lead. Each found spaces between midfield and defence. Each forced Messi’s side into uncomfortable moments they should never have experienced against supposedly inferior opposition.

That consistency matters. One match can be dismissed as an off day. Three becomes evidence.

Perhaps age has caught parts of this squad. Perhaps the burden of defending a World Cup weighs heavier than chasing one. Or perhaps this simply is not the complete team that conquered Qatar four years ago.

Whatever the explanation, Argentina no longer intimidate opponents into submission.

Messi’s unfinished chapter

For the first time in his extraordinary World Cup career, Messi will now face England. That fact alone feels astonishing.

The rivalry has existed for generations, but their paths never crossed. Argentina’s last meeting with England came in a 3-2 friendly defeat in Switzerland in 2005. No player in today’s Argentina squad, Messi included, featured that day.

Their World Cup history needs little introduction.

England prevailed 3-1 in 1962 before eliminating Argentina 1-0 in the fractious quarter-final of 1966. Then came Mexico in 1986, when Diego Maradona produced two goals that became football’s greatest contradiction.

One entered history as the Hand of God, the most infamous act of deception the World Cup has known. Four minutes later came redemption of a different kind as Maradona slalomed past half the England team to score what many still regard as the greatest goal ever seen on this stage.

The rivalry resumed in 1998, when David Beckham’s dismissal and England’s penalty shoot-out defeat deepened the mythology, before Beckham’s penalty settled the 2002 meeting.

Wednesday brings the fifth World Cup meeting between two nations that have spent six decades turning football matches into historical documents.

Messi has never written his own chapter. Now he finally can.

England’s chance

Thomas Tuchel will not study this quarter-final with fear. He will study it with belief.

England have watched three successive opponents expose Argentina’s vulnerabilities. They have seen a midfield that can be bypassed, a defence that can be unsettled and a team whose confidence flickers whenever momentum changes hands.

More importantly, they have seen a champion increasingly dependent on moments rather than mastery.

That does not make Argentina weak. It makes them dangerous in a different way.

The great Brazil sides overwhelmed opponents with brilliance. This Argentina side survives them through resilience.

Beauty has gradually given way to stubbornness. Control has surrendered to endurance. They no longer win because they are unquestionably better.

They win because, somehow, they always find one more answer than everyone else. That may be enough to reach another final.

Or it may finally be England’s opportunity.

Forty years after the Hand of God turned this rivalry into football’s most enduring argument, the next chapter arrives carrying a very different question.

Not whether England should fear Argentina but whether Argentina should now fear England.

Click here to read article