Argentina-England: A fierce rivalry told through three World Cup matches

Argentina and England will face off in the semifinals of the 2026 World Cup on Wednesday in Atlanta, Ga.

It's the sixth time these two teams have met on the World Cup stage and the first time they've done so since 2002. Those previous meetings, however, carry a lot of weight for the Three Lions and the Albiceleste. They've provided some of the biggest, wildest and most controversial results in World Cup history — and they splash serious color onto this upcoming semifinal.

Here's the story of the long-lived rivalry between Argentina and England, told through three of their previous World Cup meetings.

Quarterfinals, World Cup 1966: England 1-0 Argentina

Few games have done more to shape the future of the World Cup than this one. Played at London's Wembley Stadium in front of a braying crowd, the two teams racked up a whopping 56 fouls between them across 90 minutes of stop-and-start play. 

Argentina captain Antonio Rattin wound up getting sent off for repeated infractions. In a dramatic twist, though, he claimed not to understand the referee and refused to leave the field. He was dismissed nearly 10 minutes later via police escort, and FIFA, embarrassed by the spectacle, introduced the concept of yellow and red cards to avoid repeating it in the future. 

Neither side was thrilled with the way the match went. Argentina argued that Rattin never should've been dismissed at all and that England had committed more fouls with zero punishment (and it was correct on that front). England argued that Argentina's playing style was too dirty to be legitimate, with coach Alf Ramsey going as far as to call Argentina "animals" in the press.

In the end, though, England wound up winning this match 1-0 thanks to a Geoff Hurst header. Hurst would go on to score a hat trick in the World Cup final weeks later to hand England its first, and thus far only, World Cup trophy.

Quarterfinals, World Cup 1986: Argentina 2-1 England

Twenty years on from the battle of 1966, the two sides met again, this time in Mexico City under the shadow of war. The two nations had come to blows over the status of the Malvinas Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean just a few years prior, and the energy humming behind their World Cup clash felt positively militant.

It was Argentina that emerged victorious here, thanks to two wild goals from Diego Maradona. The first was one of the most controversial goals in World Cup history: early on in the second half, Maradona outjumped England goalkeeper Peter Shilton and knocked the ball into the net with his hand. England cried foul, but the goal stood. Maradona famously said it was scored "a little bit with the hand of God and a little bit with the head of Maradona." Indeed.

Any complaints England had about unfair goals vanished when Maradona scored his second. He took possession of the ball deep in his own half and sprinted past one, two, three and eventually four England players before rounding Shilton and lashing the ball into the net. It was a moment of individual brilliance, and it's gone down in history as one of the World Cup's finest goals.