A FRIENDLY VERSUS YOU REALLY MUST THE ARGIES? BE JOKING...

Panto star Shaun loses the plot in just three months

TRY telling an Argentinian that Saturday’s World Cup warm-up against England in Geneva is a friendly and he will look you right in the eye and tell you there’s no such thing as an amistoso when these two nations meet.

Ever since English headmaster Alexander Watson Hutton formed the first league in Argentina — won by Old Caledonians, incidentally — the South American country has developed a passion for the game that intensifies whenever England form the opposition.

There have been 13 such meetings, five of them in World Cups, and with each occasion there has developed a greater obsession on both sides to win.

There are compelling reasons, historical and political, why this neurosis has deepened but Roberto Perfumo, a former Argentina captain and a senior member of the disgraced 1966 World Cup side that lost to England in the quarterat Wembley, sums up his country’s feelings by recalling events two decades later.

‘ In the 1986 World Cup, winning that game against England in Mexico City was enough. Winning the cup that year was secondary for us. Beating England was our real aim,’ he says.

The fact that the clash at the Estadio Azteca was the first meeting since the Falklands War explains his statement.

Cesar Luis Menotti, coach of Argentina’s World Cup-winning side in 1978, admitted how his compatriots were delighted by Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal. ‘They said it was great that the goal was so unjust because it hurt the English more,’ he said.

Such feelings, which can be traced back 200 years to Argentina’s colonial past, have been stoked by controversial matches that followed the first, relatively good- natured, game between the countries in 1951.

That match, part of the Festival of Britain celebrations, was memorable more for eccentric visiting goalkeeper Miguel Rugilo, who was nicknamed Tarzan and had the crowd roaring by swinging on the crossbar, than for the goals from Stan Mortensen and Jackie Milburn that won the game 2-1.

It was the next visit to these shores that created strong feelings on the English side of the relationship. The teams met in the last eight of the 1966 World Cup when the Argentinians deliberately set out to antagonise Alf Ramsey’s side.

Their skipper, Antonio Rattin, disputed every decision made by referee Rudolf Kreitlin, who eventually decided he had heard and seen enough and sent him off. But Rattin refused to go. A tall, imposing figure, he looked down on the West German official and stood his ground.

It took 10 minutes before he walked slowly towards the tunnel, the derision of 100,000 fans screeching in his ear.

Ramsey stepped on to the pitch at the end to prevent George Cohen from swapping shirts with Perfumo before describing the South Americans as ‘animals’. That was the trigger for deeper resentment and has not been forgotten to this day.

Each game since appears to have been surrounded by some form of controversy.

In 1974, the late Emlyn Hughes had a skirmish as the players left the Wembley pitch at half-time and was then adjudged by the Argentinian referee to have fouled Mario Kempes late in the game.

It appeared a questionable decision but Kempes took the resulting penalty to earn his side a 2-2 draw from a match littered with personal feuds and retaliations.

Three years later, in Buenos Aires, there was further trouble.

Daniel Bertoni, who played alongside Maradona at Napoli, scored Argentina’s goal in a 1-1 draw and knocked out two of Trevor Cherry’s front teeth. To this day he boasts the scar on his knuckles. Both players were sent off.

When the ‘Hand of God’ put England out of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico there was the sense that 1966 had been avenged. Not a bit of it. Fate drew them together again in Saint-Etienne during France ’98.

Diego Simeone’s reaction to a petulant flick by David Beckham earned the young United midfielder a red card and ensured that he became Public Enemy No 1 for some time in his own land.

‘Our game is more like the Italian model,’ explains Perfumo. ‘ English players are more naive. Our game is more calculating. We study a rival closely and look for ways to destroy him. One of our approaches is to study a player’s weakness so we can try to make him angry, because in football if you get angry, you lose.’

For the gloating Argentina players, victory was once more not enough. They mocked Glenn Hoddle’s side from the dressing room to their team coach. Back in Buenos Aires, xenophobia ruled.

It resurfaced again when Deportivo La Coruna’s Argentinian defender Pedro Duscher broke Beckham’s foot in the Champions League quarterjeopardising his chances of playing against them in the 2002 World Cup.

The papers in Buenos Aires had a heyday, acclaiming Duscher as a national hero. ‘ If Beckham doesn’t make it to the World Cup, then great,’ ran the editorial in the newspaper, Ole. ‘The Empire, the Queen, London Bridge trembles ... once it was the hand of Diego Armando Maradona, now it is the foot of Pedro Duscher.’

The hysteria continued after Beckham’s penalty earned Sven Goran Eriksson’s side a 1-0 win in Sapporo, with Michael Owen branded a cheat for going down so crucially inside the penalty area.

It is against such a background that hostilities are resumed on Saturday. A friendly? You must be joking.

s.curry@dailymail.co.uk ■ Don’t miss our guide to the big match at www.dailymail.co.uk/sport

WHEN it came to securing a starring role at Manchester City, Shaun Wright- Phillips even had a part in the club’s Christmas pantomime — and not as one of the seven dwarfs, his former employers were quick to point out yesterday, nor as a munchkin in their Wizard of Oz production.

Since moving to Chelsea, however, the 5ft 5in England winger has been in the shadows rather than the spotlight. Grumpy rather than happy, as any £21million understudy would be.

Sir Alex Ferguson was clearly talking about Wright-Phillips when he suggested last week that Chelsea now bought players just to keep them away from Manchester United and Arsenal. Arsene Wenger was among those who admired the son of a famous Gunner — his goalscoring performance against Arsenal last season was one that certainly caught the attention of the Highbury manager — but he withdrew his interest the moment Chelsea started the bidding.

The deal that took WrightPhillips from the North West to West London was memorable for a number of reasons. For a start, the player said he had no desire to go, publicly as well as privately, reiterating his position even after City received a £ 19m bid one Friday afternoon last summer.

‘I’m not thinking of moving anywhere else,’ he said. ‘City is my home. I’m settled here.’

Then, John Wardle, the City chairman who played a tree in the same club panto, spoke to Wright-Phillips and suddenly discovered that the 24- yearold had changed his mind. Now he wanted to leave, Wardle was saddened to hear, and inside 48 hours a £ 21m deal had been agreed.

Much to the amazement of City’s bankers, the money was paid in a single instalment. There was no desire to pay over a period of years. No performance related agreements. Roman Abramovich authorised the transaction and Stuart Pearce suddenly had money to burn. He still has, in fact, given that Darius Vassell arrived for a fraction of that amount and Andy Cole was secured on a free transfer.

The move has proved more pleasurable for City than for Wright-Phillips. He might have tripled his salary and joined a club still comfortably in control at the summit of the Premiership table, but chances to play first- team football have been limited.

‘It will boost my chances of getting into England’s World Cup squad,’ said WrightPhillips. But that was before he realised he would start more games on the bench than the field and his form would suffer as a consequence.

Those who urged Sven Goran Eriksson to select Wright-Phillips ahead of David Beckham are now silent. England’s captain has been outstanding in the white of Real Madrid, Wright- Phillips nothing more than mediocre in the blue of Chelsea.

The problem, and one which even Eriksson has identified, comes with his delivery of the final ball. His crossing has been poor. His passing too.

While that remains the case, and while Wright- Phillips remains on the Chelsea bench, even when Arjen Robben is injured, Eriksson will stick with Beckham. Stick with Joe Cole too, ruling out any possibility of replacing one Chelsea winger with another on England’s troublesome left side.

Cole will also have to join Eriksson’s supporting cast against Argentina this weekend. England will meet the South Americans without a winger in the team. Ledley King will play the holding role, with a more compact trio of Beckham, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard across the midfield.

Only when England meet opposition who play with a flat four in midfield will Eriksson revert to the more traditional 4-4-2 and restore a winger to his side — and that, as things stand, will still be Cole.

Wright- Phillips has had his moments in an England shirt, but he has not been the player who also had the Arsenal dressing room talking after that Premiership encounter last season.

That was the Wright-Phillips who attracted the interest of Wenger, persuaded Mourinho to part with £ 21m and, by playing a bush, thrilled a young audience who then watched him disappear somewhere over the rainbow.