Argentina vice-president brands England "usurping pirates" ahead of World Cup semi-final
Political tensions linger between Argentina and Great Britain over the Falkland Islands, which boiled over into conflict in 1982.
Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said it would be “madness” to mix up sport and politics ahead of the match, but his country’s vice-president Victoria Villarruel stoked up the rhetoric around it in a post on X.
“Tomorrow we play against the usurping pirates,” the post began.
“This isn’t just another match. I’m not going to be politically correct or cold-hearted; against the English, it’s always something more.
Mañana jugamos contra los piratas usurpadores.
— Victoria Villarruel (@VickyVillarruel) July 15, 2026
No es un partido más.
No voy a ser políticamente correcta ni pecho frío, contra los ingleses siempre es algo más. Es Malvinas, es el Diego, es la última de Leo y es pararle el carro a los invasores.
¡Aguante Argentina! Porque…
“It’s the Malvinas, it’s Diego, it’s Leo’s last one, and it’s putting the brakes on the invaders. Go Argentina! Because until our last breath, we’re going to claim what’s ours!”
Las Malvinas is Argentina’s name for the Falklands, which in 2013 held a referendum where islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain a UK overseas territory.
Atlanta has deployed additional personnel for Wednesday’s semi-final in an effort to ensure safety and security.
Scaloni did his best to steer away from any geopolitical discussion in his pre-match press conference on Tuesday.
“It’s a football match; I can’t mix things up, out of respect for what happened so many years ago,” he said.
“It was a very sad time in our history, and there isn’t much we can do about it. Mixing the two would be madness. We criticise that there was war.
“Of course people remember history and what happened. It is a game of football, we need to keep things separate.
“Yes, we remember Argentinian people and people that were lost in the war, but let’s not conflate things.
“What do the players of today have to do with many, many years ago?”
The eyes of the footballing world will be on Atlanta as Lionel Messi and co attempt to stop the back-to-back European Championship runners-up reaching a third final in four major tournaments.
England manager Thomas Tuchel is not bogged down by emotions heading into the semi-final.
Asked if he has any sense how excited people are at home to be a match away from a first men’s World Cup final since triumphing in 1966, he said: “No, but I think that’s essentially what a World Cup is for.
“To excite the country, to excite fans and to transmit energy and make people forget their worries, make people’s lives better for 90, 120 minutes, and be just combined and be united and represented by a team.
“There’s so much to love about this England squad and our team that I’m very glad that that that people feel it.
“A burden? No, I don’t feel a burden. I mean, we feel the tension and I will be nervous, and of course that is that is normal.
“But I feel no burden. I feel what I really like is what I feel in the last days that the players are very, very competitive.
“They are very excited and like I said, they are hungry to play this match.
“I mean the two shirts are just iconic, the historic matches are iconic. There are iconic moments, but everyone recognises this shirt straight away, everyone recognises the players straightaway.
“So, it is the absolute beauty in the magnitude of a match, in the magnitude of an occasion.
“But, me personally, I don’t feel it as a burden. I will feel the nerves and the tension. That is that is quite normal, but that just comes normal with these matches.”
Tuchel was in a relaxed, upbeat mood ahead of the fourth World Cup semi-final in England’s history, repeatedly saying in the build-up that there is nowhere in the world he would rather be.
But he admits his first tournament as an international manager has been a “draining” experience riding this emotional “roller coaster”, meaning it has been important to ground himself and refresh.
“I try to do my morning sport and sometimes you just go on a bike,” he said. “You just need a big parking lot and an ice cream in your hand for 15 minutes and you feel like a 15 year-old, not 50.
“You enjoy your evening in a warm summer evening for 15 minutes and you reconnect to the beauty of that feeling we all have inside of us. That’s sometimes all it needs.”
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