There is a common misconception that winning at World Cups is about desire, patriotism, “wanting it”, team spirit or even something called “momentum”. Romantics will have loved seeing Argentina’s players bouncing up and down in their changing-room after their 2-0 win over Mexico, thumping their lockers and shouting, tunelessly yet touchingly, the song of their own fans:
“I was born in Argentina / Land of Diego and Lionel / Of the boys of the Malvinas, whom I’ll never forget?.?.?.”
No wonder Lionel Messi calls it his favourite supporters’ song. A migrant worker in Europe since the age of 13, long distrusted at home, he has finally been given a place of honour in the national narrative, alongside Diego Maradona and the young conscripts killed in the Falklands (or Malvinas) war against Britain in 1982. As it happens, the author of the new lyrics, the theology and catechism teacher Fernando Romero, is from Hurlingham, the most British-influenced suburb of Buenos Aires.