Matches at the World Cup carry a unique weight. Across their history, England have only contested 79 fixtures in the tournament finals, a number barely exceeding two full campaigns in their domestic top division over the 76 years since their debut. These contests attract vast audiences: more than 17 million viewers in the UK tuned in for the recent late-night victory over Norway, which concluded past midnight. In most nations, no sporting event, and perhaps no other cultural moment, generates as much debate and scrutiny. These are rare occasions that unite enormous populations in shared hope, anguish, euphoria, and sympathy. They weave themselves into the cultural fabric.
Flashpoints from these matches become enduring reference points. It’s common for observers to draw parallels with games from 60 years ago, trusting that most will grasp the connection. This creates a strange, warping effect. Individual results are overanalyzed to a degree that would never occur during a regular club campaign. The mistake by Senne Lammens that sealed Belgium’s quarter-final loss was witnessed by a far larger global audience than watches a typical top-flight club fixture. There is no imminent league match days later to allow that error to fade quickly from memory. It becomes a permanent chapter in his personal narrative, even if a future tournament eventually recasts it as the prelude to a story of atonement through a magnificent performance.
The very infrequency of these fixtures shapes their narrative. Every single one holds significance. That fundamental truth is why the now-abandoned proposal to stage the tournament on a biennial basis must always be strongly opposed. Restraint undeniably heightens impact. Yet, because the shared legacy is so well-known and ever-present, each national team inevitably finds itself wrestling with the specters of its own history. The mental dimension plays a far greater role in this competition than in any other version of the sport.
Spain’s journey has taken them to only one previous World Cup semi-final, a 1-0 victory over Germany in 2010. It was a masterclass in control, patiently wearing their opponents down until a 73rd-minute header from Carles Puyol broke the deadlock. That triumph stands as a sharp contrast to their lengthy pattern of underperformance before their 2008 continental breakthrough. They have advanced to the last four of the European championships six times, triumphing in five. They have claimed victory in five of the six major tournament finals they have reached, demonstrating their prowess in the decisive stages. However, the showpiece they lost, back in 1984, was against France, their upcoming semi-final opponents. They also fell to France in a dramatic Euro 2000 quarter-final, a night remembered for a missed late penalty from Raúl that would have drawn his side level at 2-2.
France, however, contend with their own haunting memories, particularly around the semi-final stage. The 1982 contest in Seville stands as perhaps the most devastating evening in the nation’s football lore. With the score locked at 1-1 after an hour, substitute Patrick Battiston was the victim of a terrible, unpunished collision with West Germany’s goalkeeper Toni Schumacher. Battiston was knocked unconscious, suffering a broken jaw, three fractured ribs, and the loss of two teeth. France surged to a 3-1 lead in extra time, but on a stifling night, their effective loss of a substitute took its toll. West Germany rallied, equalized, and triumphed in the tournament’s first-ever penalty shootout. Four years later, France again succumbed to the same opponent in the semi-finals. A subsequent run of three straight semi-final victories may have soothed some anxieties, yet the very essence of deep-seated anxieties is that they resurface without warning.
And naturally, the shared history between France and Spain pales in comparison to the deep-rooted saga of England and Argentina. From Bobby Charlton’s strike in 1962 and the dismissal of Antonio Rattín in 1966, to the “Hand of God” moment in 1986, David Beckham’s sending-off in 1998, and the incident where Michael Owen fell over Mauricio Pochettino’s leg in 2002, the past is layered. The two sides have not met since a remarkable friendly in Geneva in 2005, a match where both teams appeared to forget the low stakes, delivering a classic that saw Juan Román Riquelme seemingly steer Argentina to victory, only for Owen to score twice in the last five minutes to secure the win for England.
Back then, the echoes of 1998 and 2002 were still vivid. Now, two decades on, with so many Argentinian players starring in England’s top division and the Falklands conflict and the “Hand of God” incident having receded further into history, the fierceness of the rivalry may have softened somewhat. But the roots of the antagonism reach far deeper. A certain psychological tension always crackles when these two nations meet. Their very first encounter, in 1951, was framed by the Argentinian press almost entirely as pupils challenging their teachers, the former imperial power that had first brought them the game. A trace of that dynamic—transformed now, of course, into a contest between exceptionally gifted former students—still lingers.
And England, of course, carry their own wounds from semi-finals gone by, from the penalty heartbreak in Turin against West Germany in 1990 to the painful unravelling against Croatia in Moscow in 2018. In this tournament, they have partly exorcised the pathology connected to the “Hand of God” by securing a victory at the Azteca stadium. The next logical progression would be to finally overcome Argentina in a knockout match.
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