Team profile: Argentina

Lionel Messi is widely regarded as the best player in the world, and the diminutive Barcelona forward fits in with a long-established Argentine soccer trope: the “pibe” (literally “boy”), a diminutive lad whose exquisite close control allows him to get the better of far bigger men. The consummate pibe in Argentine legend is, of course, Diego Maradona, but all that stands between Messi and claiming Maradona’s place in the pantheon is a stellar World Cup performance — it’s a longstanding complaint in Argentina that Messi has never delivered a fraction of his Barcelona form in the national shirt.

But there’s a second pibe on the side who could snatch some of the limelight: Manchester City striker Sergio Agüero, who, coincidentally, happens to be Maradona’s son-in-law. And the more traditional center forward Gonzalo Higuaín may want a piece of the action, too. Add Real Madrid winger Angel di María and Paris Saint-Germain’s Ezequiel Lavezzi, and Argentina has an embarrassment of riches in attack.

Argentina’s 3–1 victory over Holland to land its first World Cup on home soil in 1978 may have made the cut, but that tournament was always shadowed by the ugliness of the military dictatorship staging it. But in the national emotion, no win would compare to the 1986 trouncing of England — a match in which Maradona scored both the notorious “Hand of God” goal and perhaps the most sublime strike ever seen at the tournament — on the way to winning the title. Beating England was symbolic revenge for Argentina’s losses in the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas war; Argentina’s players even said as much after the game.

Many pundits have Argentina at the top of the list of rivals waiting to take home the cup should Brazil should slip up. It’s being played in its neighborhood, Messi has been turning it on for the national team, and as opposed to 2010, when Maradona took on the ill-fitting mantle of coach — and made a number of glaring strategic blunders — this is a well-disciplined unit with a far stronger midfield. If Messi is on song, not even Brazil can be confident of besting Argentina.

Despite its stellar attack, Argentina’s defense remains questionable, particularly center-back Martin Demichelis, who endured an uncomfortable start to his Manchester City career before finding his feet. World Cups are often won by a single goal, and Argentina may be vulnerable to being hit on the break. And then there’s the mentality that has earned it a reputation for choking in big tournaments, after failing to live up to expectations in 2006 and 2010.

“It didn’t occur to me at the time, but as time started to go by, I have this dilemma,” said Osvaldo Ardiles, midfield hero of the victorious 1978 team, years later. “We were playing the final in the River Plate stadium, and three, four hundred yards from there was the ESMA. Later, we learned it was the main torture center of the navy. And I think when we score, everybody there could hear, you know. The guards would tell the prisoners: ‘We are winning,’ it was probably how they put it. They would not say Argentina is winning, they would say ‘we.’ One is the torturer, the other is the victim.”

The stain of the dictatorship, which claimed the national euphoria brought on by the victory as “proof” that Argentines were happy under military rule, has hovered over that first World Cup triumph ever since. Thirty years after the event, a number of the players from that match joined human rights activists in a commemorative event to honor those who heard the game over the radios of their jailers.