There was a lot to dislike about Argentina’s conduct at this World Cup, and it’s important to remember they have a long history of defying moral boundaries.

The best thing to come out of England’s run in the latter stages of this World Cup is the hue and cry the media raised over Colombia’s use of the dark arts. It magically transformed progressive, globalist citizens of the world into Victorian gentlemen complete with top hat, tails, and a great deal of moral outrage. They tut-tut, shake their heads at the effrontery of those foreign fellas pressuring the referee, and adjourn to the study for conversations about the purity of sport on the playing fields of Eton with cigars and sherry. I can get behind that sort of opprobrium though. Indeed, I am at my most comfortable in this environment of footballing umbrage.
I attended a strict religious school as a young man where John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was studied in great detail every year of secondary school. It is an allegorical novel that follows the protagonist Christian as he makes his way through the world to the afterlife. It was popular with my teachers because it provided straightforward moral lessons. I could not have told you the first thing about Homer’s Iliad or Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but I could talk at length about the allegory of the Slough of Despond in the First Part of Bunyan’s classic. As I got further and further from that phase of life, I thought I outgrew the easy moralism that I received as a student. But then I watched Argentinian players needle and surround the referee at this World Cup – the pietism and religiose outrage came flooding back. What a bunch of scoundrels, I thought (my inner monologue has the same vocabulary as the easily offended Victorian gentlemen in the previous paragraph).
This should not have surprised me. I knew Argentina and its history of gamesmanship. Osvaldo Zubeldia’s Estudiantes and his antifutbol in the 60’s made a mockery of the “cheaters never prosper” proverb. They kicked, punched, goaded, stamped, pinched, headbutted, and spat their way to three consecutive Copa Libertadores titles. The provocateurs also triumphed in the 1968 Intercontinental Cup (thanks to a goal from Juan Sebastian Veron’s dear old dad) over Manchester United after outrageously needling Nobby Stiles and George Best into red cards over two legs. They followed up this scandalous performance by reaching new lows against AC Milan in the 1969 final, resulting in players being arrested for assault. The stories and conspiracy theories surrounding Argentina’s World Cup win in 1978 are too outrageous to be false. And, of course, there is the most iconic act of foul play in all of football, Diego Maradona’s 1986 Hand of God. The willingness to defy social norms by shamelessly cheating to get ahead has its own term in the Spanish around the Rio de la Plata: viveza criolla. As Jorge Luis Borges pointed out, Argentinians lack moral conduct, not intellectual conduct.