England’s blind hope

For days before England played Argentina in the World Cup semi-final, the old dread had been rising in me like damp through a wall. England against Argentina has never once been merely a football match. I will spare you the suspense, since England never do: it ended badly. It is the how that matters. I was six the first and only time my father took me to Wembley. It was 1966, and we went to watch England play Argentina in a bad-tempered, goalless quarter-final that passed into legend when the Argentine captain, Antonio Rattín, was sent off, and refused for a small eternity to leave the pitch. He clearly wasn’t a gentleman. Twenty years later, in Mexico, Diego Maradona knocked England out with two goals, one of them scored with his hand. “It was as if we had beaten a country, not just a foo