Ken Jones: The latest chapter in England's battle with unjustly accused

A couple of days before England and Argentina met at the quarter-final stage of the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico, it could be concluded that tactical and technical matters would matter less than the outcome of a tussle between Diego Maradona and Peter Shilton. Before that thought (of course, I had no suspicion of infamy) could be transferred to the keys of a battered typewriter, a call came from the Sunday Mirror, at the time my employers.

The caller expressed no great enthusiasm for the proposed theme, the suggestion of it in fact meeting with stony silence. "What about the Falklands?" I was asked. "That's what you should be thinking about."

"The Falklands!" I snorted. "We're talking about a football match, not a war. You'd better get somebody else." They did.

Fast forward to 1998 and another, the most recent, World Cup encounter between England and Argentina. Sitting around waiting for the kick-off in St-Etienne, I fell into conversation with a group of Danish journalists whose faces were familiar from other sweat fests. "Please explain why some of your people feel it necessary to bring up the Falklands," one of them asked, shaking his head.

Recently, the makers of an otherwise excellent Channel 4 football documentary could not resist introducing the Falklands conflict. This week, The Sun put a shameful spin on remarks innocently passed by the Argentina and Manchester United midfielder, Juan Sebastian Veron.

In the minds even of English people whose birth came years afterwards, Argentina is the home of Antonio Rattin, the man who to so many epitomises the nasty Argentinians, just because they have read or been told about him being sent off against England at Wembley in 1966.

The truth is that Argentina were certainly not the most ruthless team in the 1966 World Cup. Anyone who saw how Brazil were treated by Bulgaria and Portugal, how the Russians played against North Korea and West Germany, indeed how many matches ensured that Fifa would have to act against violence and bad sportsmanship in future World Cups, could be forgiven for thinking that Argentina's conduct was not the worst.

Unfortunately, all this passed beyond reasonable assessment with Rattin's dismissal for what would not have earned him even a caution in earlier matches. But for the collapse of discipline in the quarter-final Argentina might have beaten England. "Even against 10 men it was desperately close," George Cohen recalls. "If Rattin had stayed on the field, who knows?"

Argentina's coach in 1966 was Juan Carlos Lorenzo, who had come under ferocious criticism after a 3-1 loss to England in the 1962 World Cup finals put his team out of the tournament. England's manager in 1962, the late Walter Winterbottom, remembered Lorenzo saying that he feared returning to Buenos Aires. Winterbottom knew Lorenzo as a pupil on FA coaching courses at Lilleshall. "A quiet, studious type," he said. Some years later, the same Lorenzo coached the Atletico Madrid team that played so violently against Celtic in Glasgow that they finished with eight men.

Subjective British reporting of events in the late 1960s when first Celtic then Manchester United came up against Argentinian opposition for the World Club Championship caused bitter feelings in Buenos Aires. If Argentinian sportsmanship fled the field in 1966, British fairness did not exist in 1967 and 1968. Argentinian football felt it had been unjustly accused.

Robbed by Italy of its best players in the 1930s (three naturalised Argentinians, including the great centre-half Luisito Monti, turned out for Italy in a ferociously contested match against England at Highbury in 1934) Argentina was again bled in the 50s when two of its greatest players, Alfredo di Stefano and Omar Sivori, appeared respectively in the colours of Spain and Italy.

Argentinian football had to wait until 1978 for the fulfillment of its potential. With home advantage and coming under the civilizing influence of Carlos Menotti, they at last won a World Cup. Another came in 1986, inspired by Maradona's genius if marred by his fisted goal against England.

Someone wrote that the Argentinian nation had two unifying factors: religion and football. They are still all it has to withstand the political and economic upheavals which follow one another with frightening frequency. In many countries men worship worse gods than those of the Church and the stadium.