Contepomi, the hungry Puma aiming to wreck England's plans

Argentina began the last World Cup with a shock victory. Felipe Contepomi tells Chris Hewett they are ready to upset the applecart again in three weeks' time

Felipe Contepomi will captain Argentina against Wales today in their World Cup warm-up (Getty Images)

Four years ago, Argentina arrived at the World Cup with a granite pack and a captain perfectly equipped to lead them through seven glorious weeks of applecart-upsetting mischief. That captain was Agustin Pichot, and his senior lieutenant was Felipe Contepomi. This time, Contepomi will be running the show himself, and as there are similar forces at work – the Puma forwards are every bit as unlikely to take prisoners in New Zealand as they were in France, and they have a skipper who is not obviously in need of a personality transfusion – England must tread very carefully indeed.

"At a World Cup, a good start gives you a great advantage," says the doctor from Buenos Aires. "No one thought we could beat France in Paris in the opening game of the last tournament. By doing so, we put ourselves in the front seat for the rest of the competition. In comparison to 2007, we are a question-mark team: then, the hardcore had been together for eight or nine years. Now, we are quite inexperienced in some areas and we spend little time together. But we are together now and everything we are doing is geared towards our first match in Dunedin. If we can be at our best, then..."

England will be their opponents in that fixture three weeks today and need no reminding of the likely repercussions of defeat. In 2007, the Pumas' victory over France knocked the tournament out of sync: assumption, expectation, calculation, months of planning and preparation... it all disappeared through the nearest first-floor window and landed splat in the boulevard below. Should Martin Johnson's team finish second on 10 September, their chances of making the semi-finals – the minimum requirement for a lavishly-resourced side pieced together over three and a half years – will be remote.

By tea-time today, Johnson will have at least a couple of answers to set against that South American question mark. Argentina play Wales at the Millennium Stadium in their only serious warm-up fixture – "We asked around, but no one else agreed to play us," Contepomi says – and the Pumas will be close to full strength. Veteran tight forwards from the last campaign, including the front-rowers Rodrigo Roncero and Mario Ledesma and the lock Patricio Albacete, are in the starting line-up, as is the mighty loose forward Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe.

It will be fascinating to watch Contepomi stoking the fires. On the face of it, he is not a street fighter in the style of his great friend Pichot, who retired from international rugby after the Pumas' third-place finish in 2007 and is now a mover and shaker on the Unió* Argentina de Rugby, the governing body with whom he fell out so often during his playing career. Contepomi comes from a medical family – his father has a practice in Buenos Aires – and as his career nears its conclusion (he turns 34 today), he is increasingly motivated by his professional future, as opposed to professional games-playing.

"I still enjoy my rugby, but while it was once too big a part of my life, I know now that it is just a sport," he says. "It is a much smaller part of my life these days – I have two kids, and I have my vocation. I had no opportunity to practise medicine when I was playing club rugby in Toulon, but now I am moving to Paris to play for Stade Francais, I will do much more. It's good for the mind to follow your dreams, and my dream was always to be a doctor. It is this that drives me. If your dream is to do nothing in life, then do nothing. As long as you understand the consequences. For me, it's easier to have a vocation than to do nothing."

For all that, there is not a player in the international game who gives more of himself on the field: when the fur is flying, Contepomi is every bit as much of a fighter as Pichot. The difference is in their approach to the politics of Argentine rugby. Where Pichot seethed at the obstacles placed in front of his team by the old-world amateurs of the Buenos Aires hierarchy, Contepomi takes a more philosophical view.

"There are sectors of the game, particularly in our capital, where negativity towards professionalism remains," he admits, "but with Gus on the union now, we have very strong support from that direction. We're still having the argument other countries had 15 years ago, but things are changing. It's more widely accepted that our elite players must be professional: it's become a question of when, not if.

"Yes, it is true that professionalism goes hand in hand with the business side of rugby, and that we often find ourselves on the outside of that business. Other teams spend far longer together: we meet for six weeks every year while the Wallabies play 15 Tests a season. We can either see it as an injustice and moan about it, or use the time we do have to get to know each other and explore our potential. This is what we are doing."

Contepomi considers England major contenders for the Webb Ellis Trophy – "They have a particular gift for performing well at World Cups" – and rates one player above all as a threat to Puma ambitions. "I know Jonny Wilkinson," he says. "I was alongside him in Toulon and I can tell you that he is able to play any game people want him to play. He is strong in defence, he has a good sidestep, he has wonderful distribution, he has one of the best boots ever... The criticism he gets, I can't believe. I'm not the England coach, but if I was picking a starting XV, I just might pick Jonny in it. He is one of the great men of rugby."

As is Contepomi. If the two men meet as direct opponents in Dunedin, there will no shortage of mutual respect, just as there will be no quarter asked.