1982. May 1st. Lisbon. Full Falklands War. Argentina and England play in the Roller Hockey World Cup. Argentina wins 8 to 0. Players are forbidden to greet each other, but at the end of the game arching their eyebrows or winking their eyes comply with the rite of the sports hug. I witnessed as a magazine envoy The graphic. I wrote about the strength of sport beyond everything.
1986. Mexico Soccer World Cup. Argentina-England. In the previous one, the match is talked about linking it with the Falklands. as sent from The reason I write that Bilardo is not Galtieri and Robson is not Thatcher and I try to differentiate the football game from the war. “The Malvinas are Argentine and soccer belongs to the people,” I say. And I imply that they have nothing to do with the match being against the English.
1998. Saint Etienne. England and Argentina play. Round of 16 of the World Cup. They draw 2-2, and have to define on penalties. Those sent from Page 12, Juan Sasturain, Daniel Lagares and this chronicler wrote about the match, about Roa, and the soccer rivalry that meant that for the first time in the entire championship no one thought of doing the wave. I remember that I shouted a lot the last penalty, that I enjoyed the victory like few times and that for a moment the Malvinas crossed me in the midst of that feeling of enormous joy.
2022. Argentina. I write a note to PageI12 in a Falklands supplement. At this point, I understand and value what Diego Maradona said in a different way and relativize what I wrote before. “It was like beating a country, not a soccer team. Although we said before the game that football had nothing to do with the Falklands War, we knew that many Argentine kids had died there, that they had been killed like little birds… And this was a rematch, was to recover something from the Falklands. We were defending our flag, the dead kids, the survivors,” Maradona said.
Diego interpreted the feeling of the Argentine people more clearly than me. Let me sing, then, in the last line, abandoning all political and journalistic correctness: “He who does not jump is an Englishman, he who does not jump is an Englishman…”.
