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’Sport is not war’ — except when Argentina plays England
Argentina’s President Javier Milei gestures from the balcony of Casa Rosada presidential palace in Buenos Aires on May 25, 2026. | Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s a soccer match. Nothing more to it. Period.”
That’s how Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni described his team’s World Cup semifinal against England to journalists.
No one believes him, least of all Argentinians themselves.
For many in the South American nation, the match is more than a stepping stone toward the World Cup title. It is a long-awaited chance to restore their national pride, over four decades after the British established de facto control over a cluster of islands in the South Atlantic.
For Argentina President Javier Milei, the timing couldn’t be better. Unpopular at home over multiple corruption scandals and rampant inflation, yet buoyed by his close alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump, he has sought to rally Argentinians around the flag by breathing new life into the dispute which claimed 649 Argentine and 255 British lives.
“Argentina is a very polarized country, like so much of the Americas. But this is an issue that unites everyone,” says Rebecca Bill Chavez, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for western hemisphere affairs under President Barack Obama.
“It doesn’t matter in Argentina: Left, right, center, you’re all for the Malvinas, as they call it,” Bill Chavez adds, referencing the name Argentinians use for the Falklands.
On Saturday, five days before the match, Argentina’s foreign minister Pablo Quirno came out swinging with a lengthy opinion piece in the conservative daily La Nación.
The Malvinas, he argued, were Argentinian “by history, by right, and by conviction” and the Brits guilty of an “illegal occupation.”
On the eve of the game, the country’s vice president, Victoria Villarruel, amped up the rhetoric in a post on X that referred to England as “invaders” and “usurping pirates.”
It is the latest in a series of jabs at Westminster, marking a notable shift for the government of Milei, who distinguished himself from his predecessors by taking a relatively moderate — and domestically sensitive — stance on the Falklands.
He has openly praised Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister who sent troops to the islands in 1982. And he seemed to accept the results of a 2013 referendum in which 99.8 percent of the Falklands’ residents voted to remain under British rule (only three people voted against.)
One day, Milei fantasized in a speech on Veterans Day in April just last year, the islanders might find Argentina so attractive that they’d “vote for us” voluntarily.
But that was then.
This April he announced on X that the Falklands “”were, are and will always be Argentine.”
The jingoistic post came hours after Reuters reported that an internal Pentagon memo had suggested Washington could review its diplomatic support for the British position on the Falklands in retaliation for its foot-dragging on Iran.
Milei’s brashness, and the absence of a U.S. response, is evidence of his close relationship with the White House under Trump, notes Bill Chavez.
“In the past, if an Argentine government had made such a statement, I think it would have caused real tension in the U.S.-Argentine relationship,” she said.
But she cautions that neither the leaked memo nor American support for Argentina’s acquisition of F16s in 2025 under the Biden administration indicate an actual shift in U.S. policy on the Falklands.
For Milei, the Falklands issue is not straightforward either.
If the topic becomes too central, “Milei loses,” said Andrés Gilio of Opina Argentina, a pollster.
In a survey it conducted in April, an overwhelming majority of respondents, 79 percent, argued the country should pursue sovereignty over the islands “without concessions.”
“Either Milei ‘Malvinizes’ his discourse, aligning himself with public opinion but straining relations with the United States and blurring his ideological profile, or he remains faithful to his ideas, downplaying the sovereignty claim, at the risk of going against most of society’s wishes,” said Gilio.
So far, Milei has pressed the Falklands issue in international forums while refraining from a real confrontation.
The Argentinian Foreign Ministry declined to comment in time for this article’s publication.
Argentina has faced England five times at the World Cup, rarely without drama. Seared into Argentina’s national memory is the 1986 quarterfinal, just four years after the Falklands war, when Diego Maradona scored two historic goals.
“Although before the match we kept saying that football had nothing to do with the Falklands War,” Maradona would later write in his biography, “we knew that many young Argentine boys had died there, that they had been killed like little birds.”
This time around, Argentina’s players and fans have been anything but subtle, invoking the conflict long before they were drawn to face England. After winning against Egypt, the team’s players were filmed belting out a song calling for an Argentine World Cup victory, “for Malvinas,” in a video since gone viral.
Off-pitch, there have been skirmishes between British and Argentinian fans even as jubilant Argentine supporters have celebrated victories by singing “Whoever doesn’t jump is an Englishman.” As a precaution, FIFA has barred two of its English referees from officiating any Argentina matches.
Asked about the flaring tensions, a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said this week that “The Falkland Islanders are British with the right to determine their own future.” Starmer, he said, was “solely focused on the semi-final and securing a spot in the final.”
But perhaps the strongest plea for restraint has come from Argentinian veterans.
“Sport is not war,” the April 2 veterans group wrote in a statement widely circulated by Argentinian media on Monday.
“The World Cup semifinal is a sporting event of global significance, not an armed act of revenge or historical compensation.”
Welcome to POLITICO Forecast. For the next week, Forecast will showcase daily coverage of the World Cup, with a global eye to the players looking to win off-field. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at forecast@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at ehartog@politico.eu or on X (formerly known as Twitter)@EvaHartog.
CLIMATE AMBITIONS SHRINK AT AMERICA’S WORLD CUP: In 2022, Qatar made a dubious pledge to host the first carbon-neutral World Cup. Four years later, the United States, Canada and Mexico have overseen a much larger tournament — but limiting climate pollution is no longer a goal, write Sara Schonhardt and Corbin Hiar.
The 2026 men’s World Cup could be the most emissions-intensive tournament in the event’s history. To some extent, that was expected. FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, expanded the lineup this year from 32 teams to 48 and spread the competition to 16 cities across an entire North American continent.
The event comes as global temperature records continue to shatter, with dangerous heat blanketing the U.S. over the July 4 weekend and another heat dome expected in the U.S. this week for the competition’s final games. In addition, multilateral climate cooperation is fraying, and one of the key hosts, the United States, has a leader who calls climate change a con job.
FIFA itself has struggled to implement a climate strategy it launched at U.N.-led climate talks in 2021. As part of that plan, FIFA committed to cutting its carbon emissions in half by 2030 and zeroing them out by 2040. It also said it would “review and adapt” regulations to support climate-friendly performance and publish a bi-annual climate report disclosing FIFA’s progress toward decarbonization.
But only four of FIFA’s 18 emissions-reducing actions have made even marginal progress, according to a report by the New Weather Institute think tank, which looked at areas tied to the Qatar cup, including stadium certification, cooling technology, and the tournament offsetting programme. It predicts that this year’s World Cup will be one of the most polluting in history, responsible for at least 9 million metric tons of planet-warming emissions, and could lead to additional emissions in the future by bolstering sponsor Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company.
While no new stadiums have been built for the event, much of those emissions will come from increased air travel, the report says. England’s team, which has played games at six different stadiums across the U.S. and Mexico, has racked up more than 10,000 airline miles, according to The New York Times.
FIFA has also said it will develop a greenhouse gas inventory for the 2026 tournament. But international soccer’s governing body has not set a firm public emissions target, pledged to neutralize the event’s carbon footprint or offered a clear comparison with prior cups. It hasn’t published a climate report since 2021.
“There is no sign of the promised standardised greenhouse gas accounting methodology for tournaments, nor the global survey of football’s emissions. Worse, the bidding requirements for World Cups have actually moved backwards, as the 2026 process required a carbon footprint assessment while the 2030 and 2034 processes do not,” Freddie Daley, a researcher at the Cool Down Sport for Climate Action Network, which was involved with the New Weather Institute report, said in an email. “FIFA’s own targets don’t even cover the tournaments it coordinates, which is its largest source of emissions by far.”
A FIFA spokesperson said the organization is committed to making the tournament sustainable, pointing to a sustainability strategy that “focuses on addressing emissions, improving resource efficiency and creating a positive legacy across host communities.” The spokesperson pointed to the use of existing stadium infrastructure for this year’s games and said FIFA requires that all stadiums achieve sustainable building certification, focus on reducing reliance on diesel generators and increase recycling.
“During the event, FIFA will promote public transport, walking and cycling, in coordination with Host Cities and public authorities,” the spokesperson said. “In parallel, FIFA is supporting work that aims to plant one million trees through reforestation and community-based projects across North America, including all 16 Host Cities.”
Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu via Getty Images
This government official crosses his fingers in advance of today’s semifinal clash between England and Argentina.
NEW JERSEY VS. FIFA: Soccer’s global governing body, a Zurich-based nonprofit, is plotting to charge $450 for sodfrom this weekend’s World Cup final. But like a lot of the costs for hosting the World Cup, the pitch was subsidized by local hosts — in this case, the state of New Jersey, write Ry Rivard and Matt Friedman.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s office says the state should get a cut of the MetLife Stadium grass that FIFA plans to sell to soccer fans.
“New Jersey paid for the vast majority of the total expense for the pitch at MetLife stadium, so New Jersey taxpayers should share in any proceeds from this latest money grab,” Sherrill spokesperson Sean Higgins told New Jersey Playbook.
FIFA did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
It’s the latest battlefield in the turf war between FIFA and Sherrill. New Jersey politicians have treated the tournament and its organizers as villains for burdening local taxpayers and commuters and made FIFA the focus of a sustained pressure campaign on cost-of-living issues.
Sherrill, who played soccer as a girl, said earlier this year she has a “deep love” of the sport. But she was elected in 2025 after a campaign largely focused on affordability and entered office facing a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.
“I would say that my love of soccer does not always transfer to FIFA — that’s a little bit of a difference,” she told NJ.comduring an interview about her first 100 days in office.
A depleted oil and gas field is pictured on the North Sea, near Denmark, on Nov. 25, 2025. | Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images
BENEATH THE ATLANTIC SEABED, ENGLAND AND ARGENTINA ARE BOTH LOSING OUT: It’s win or bust for England and Argentina in today’s semifinal match. But in one area of global affairs — in a part of the world very familiar to leaders in London and Buenos Aires — both are about to lose, reports Russell Hargrave.
As first reported by the Financial Times, developers are prepping to drill the Sea Lion oil field north of the Falklands, the tiny archipelago and British Overseas Territory over which Argentina and Britain went to war in 1982.
Any windfall from an oil boom — and developers reckon revenues could run to hundreds of millions of pounds a year — would be directed to the Falklands government, much to the annoyance of Argentinian President Javier Milei, who insisted any resources “belong to Argentina.”
Not that Brits will look on particularly happily. Oil field cash flowing into Falklands’ coffers (and not to the British state) will be a reminder that the fossil fuel economy in the North Sea, once a powerhouse for jobs and Treasury income, is dwindling fast.
By 2034, according to Navitas Petroleum, co-owners of the Sea Lion field, its revenues could be worth £280 million to the island. By that point, the FT noted, its annual value to the Falklands would outstrip U.K. oil and gas revenues, which are set to dip to just £100 million by 2031.
The Falklands’ government is likely to use the money to rebuild worn-out energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, lobby group Offshore Energies UK says, the decline of the North Sea oil and gas sector is already costing a thousand jobs a month.
SPOT THE POL!: That’s David Lammy, the U.K.’s deputy prime minister, making a good luck gesture as he arrives at Downing Street for a weekly Cabinet meeting in London on July 15, 2026.
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