Throwback: Argentina vs England - France 98

It’s the international weekend so I caught up on a match from France 98. A momentous and eventful Round of 16 match between England and Argentina. I didn’t watch the match “live” in 1998 as it didn’t feature my team and it was probably in the wee hours of the morning too but I was aware of what happened in that match from reading the newspaper the next day.

These are some observations I made of the match. I felt the match started at an intense pace from the start. It wasn’t calm, collected and measured from either team. You could also sense an air of tension between the players in both teams. Argentina had the better start in the game and got an early penalty. Gabriel Batistuta converted it but it was nearly saved by David Seaman. England got a penalty of their own soon after but I felt they were fortunate. Michael Owen ran at full pace at the Argentina defence but Roberto Ayala didn’t touch Owen who went down easily. In today’s time, VAR would have overruled the referee’s initial decision. Alan Shearer stepped up to take a better penalty than his counterpart.

Michael Owen’s pace was a handful throughout the game for the Argentina defence, forcing them to sit deep and not give him space to run into with the ball. At the other end, Ariel Ortega was also a handful for England. He was dropping into the pocket of spaces between England’s midfield and defence. He was nimble, had good control of the ball and his low centre of gravity meant it was tough to stop him legitimately. It was Owen who made the breakthrough with that great solo goal. That changed the flow of the game as England started controlling the game. Paul Scholes should have made it 3-1 but he put a good opportunity wide.

Argentina punished England for that miss when they worked a great set-piece that was converted by Javier Zanetti. I was surprised that the David Beckham-Diego Simeone incident happened so early in the second half. The game had just started in the second half, the game hadn’t warmed up yet. Beckham was fouled and he won a free-kick. That should have been the end of it. Beckham got irritated with Simeone going on top of him and let his emotions get the better of him. It wasn’t the hardest of kicks but he did flick out and Simeone being a wily customer, milked it. It was an experience that served Beckham well as he grew in terms of mentality and character after that moment.

After going down to 10 men, it was all hands to the pump for England. The best chance of them scoring was through a long ball to Owen or from a set-piece. Argentina had most of the ball and came close to scoring a few times. Batistuta missed a great chance, a miss that summed up his game. Seaman made a good save on Hernan Crespo and Shearer cleared the ball from reaching Nelson Vivas. For all of Argentina’s pressure, I felt the English quartet of Seaman in goal and Gary Neville, Tony Adams and Sol Campbell in central defence had an immense game. Neville and Campbell’s performances were particularly commendable because of how young they both were in that tournament.

Campbell thought he scored England’s unlikely winner with minutes left of the regulation time but the goal was rightly disallowed for Shearer’s elbow on Argentina’s goalkeeper, Carlos Roa. It was unintentional but it did stop Roa from getting to the ball. Then came the penalties and we know what happened there. Argentina was knocked out in the following round by the Netherlands but considering England’s performances in the tournament and the qualifiers of that World Cup, I don’t feel Glenn Hoddle did as bad a job as it is made out to be.

A couple of interesting things to note, there was a Malaysian linesman in this game. It would be interesting to get his views on this game. Three years after this match, Juan Sebastian Veron became team-mates with Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and David Beckham at Manchester United. I wonder if they ever spoke about this match when he joined the club.