Dr. Josh Bland
Postdoctoral researcher at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on football fandom cultures, industrial heritage, and critical heritage studies. His PhD explored football fandom as living heritage and its role in fostering working-class cultural resilience. He is Director of Research for Fair Game UK, serves on the creative committee of the National Football Museum, and runs the heritage-focused Substack Against the Run of Play.
Email: jcwb2@cam.ac.uk
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Substack: https://joshbland.substack.com/.
With only five minutes remaining in the semi-final, it appeared England were heading to their first World Cup final since 1966. But then the story changed. Enzo Fernández’shubristically celebrated equaliser was followed by Lautaro Martínez’s last-gasp winner. Cue scenes of Argentinian jubilation and English heartbreak. And as a crescendo to a giddy three hours, several victorious Argentinian players stood beneath their baying supporters and hauled a banner aloft: “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”.
England and Argentina’s pulsating semi-final in Atlanta was not only an instant classic. It was the latest instalment of the greatest rivalry in World Cup history. But beyond the iconic images, bitter controversies and swirling emotions, the fixture provided something more. It represented a microcosm of how football functions as a form of living cultural heritage by crystallising three central characteristics of the World Cup as an evolving cultural tradition.
First, the meaning of the World Cup is sustained through intergenerational myths. Individual matches rarely take place in isolation, but are interpreted through inherited memories. Clearly, the clash between England and Argentina possesses an especially rich footballing mythology: Antonio Rattín’s red card and the “robbery of the century” in 1966, Diego Maradona’s infamous Hand of God and “goal of the century” in 1986, David Beckham’s red card in 1998 and his redemptive penalty in 2002. And underlying all the needle, the acrimonious legacy of the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas conflict.
Collectively, this bundle of memories – sporting and political – represented more than a benign historical backdrop for the 2026 fixture. They formed a set of collective memory landmarks, stories which are repeatedly watched, narrated and invested with emotional meaning. Before the semi-final, Lionel Messi – born a year after the 1986 World Cup – explained that he was cognizant of the importance of the game having grown up watching videos and images of Maradona’s iconic brace against England some 40 years previously. In this context, we can see how collective understandings of the England-Argentina rivalry are sustained by a form of intergenerational memory. Supporters not only inherit knowledge of what happened previously, but an understanding of which events matter, what they symbolise and how they should make them feel.
Second, the England-Argentina rivalry encapsulates thedissonance at the heart of the intergenerational memories that bind football supporters. Like all forms of heritage, the myths attached to football never possess a single, settled meaning. Whilst the 1966 quarter-final is remembered in Argentina as a historical injustice, in England it is remembered as a righteous comeuppance for an overly abrasive, unsportsmanlike Argentinian team. In the wider context of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict, Maradona’s “Hand of God” in 1986 can be remembered as a form of cheating, a divine intervention or symbolic revenge. His second goal is both an expression of transcendent genius and an English trauma.
In 2026, the “Malvinas” banner hoisted by the victorious Argentinians adds another dissonant layer to this fierce rivalry. Argentina’s players presented the gesture not only as an act of remembrance and national affirmation, but also as an expression of a sovereignty claim deeply embedded within Argentine public culture. In contrast, English supporters reacted with disdain and UK-based politicians condemned the banner as inappropriate.
From these divergent interpretations, we can see a central truth. Heritage is not simply the accumulation of history. It is the process through which elements of the past are selected, interpreted and used in the present. Those acts are unavoidably political. Governments, governing bodies, media organisations, players and supporters all compete to determine what the rivalry legitimately means, and its heritage is produced through that tension and dissonance, rather than being diminished by it.
Finally, living heritage is characterized by adaptive continuity. Cultural traditions do not survive by remaining unchanged. They persist by absorbing new experiences while retaining a recognizable thread of connection with what came before.
The 2026 semi-final repeated several established features of England–Argentina: a 2–1 Argentine victory, English heartbreak, emotional excess and the entanglement of football with political history. But it also transformed the rivalry. Gordon, Fernández and Martínez became new protagonists. Messi inherited Maradona’s symbolic role as Argentina’s magical, talismanic number 10. The banner consciously connected the new victory with the ever reverberating memories of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict. Within hours, another layer had been added to the rivalry’s accumulated mythology.
The result was also absorbed into England’s broader national football story. Once again, England hoped. Once again, apparent triumph dissolved into defeat. The match therefore felt simultaneously shocking and culturally familiar. It supplied fresh evidence for an inherited narrative of glorious failure, ensuring that “It’s Coming Home” will carry another layer of irony and longing when it is sung at the next tournament.
England–Argentina shows that the World Cup is not simply an event with a history. It is a living cultural tradition. Its communities inherit myths, contest their meanings and incorporate new experiences into an evolving collective story. The World Cup endures not because its past is preserved unchanged, but because players and supporters continually make that past meaningful in the present. In Atlanta, England and Argentina did not merely play another semi-final. Together, they created the newest layer of the World Cup’s living heritage.
