“For the Malvinas, for Diego, for Leo's last one,” the Argentina squad belted out in the dressing room after their quarter-final win over Switzerland.
Rodrigo De Paul sent his framed shirt from the 2022 World Cup to the Malvinas veterans centre in Lomas de Zamora.
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And in fairness this is a process that was in train long before 1982, a postcolonial insurgence that arguably began in the 1940s and 1950s under Juan Perón, a gradual and deliberate refusal of English influence, through which football acted as a kind of rhetorical conduit.
“Very early, an Argentinian way of playing football was born that clearly distanced itself from the English influence,” said Jorge Valdano, a veteran of the famous 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England.
“We tried to be antagonistic to the English. If they liked long passes, we favoured shorter ones.
If the English favoured passing, we'd focus on dribbling.
Against England, there was something else at stake, and at the time it was worth more than the championship,” said Jorge Valdano.
Over time the feeling became mutual, if not quite equal.
If Argentina was once a favoured son, then perhaps the vitriolic reaction to its subsequent turn lay in a kind of guttural, butthurt disappointment.
An ill-tempered friendly at Wembley in 1974 was marked by chants of “animals” every time Argentina touched the ball, echoing the accusation of Alf Ramsey eight years earlier.
