When Phil Neville took his England players to Qatar last winter, he sat them around a camp fire in the middle of the desert and related how it had felt to miss the final cut in the World Cup squads of 1998 and 2002.
He made light of it, in the way he often does with his squad, but it was clearly a fairly brutal experience.
Neville told how he was in Debenhams with his wife, entirely unaware of the bombshell to come, when one of Sven Goran Eriksson’s calls flashed up on his phone.
Phil Neville is preparing his England side to take on Argentina at the Women's World Cup
Neville stressed that England are facing a nation with much in the way of football history
Demi Stokes in action during England's final training session before facing Argentina
On Friday night on the Normandy coast, Neville finally gets that chance to face Argentina which he was deprived of on those two occasions. And though a women’s team ranked 37th in the world should not present the same challenge, it is clear that the heavy weight of football history comes attached for him.
‘You think of 1986, the Owen goal, ‘98, Beckham in Sapporo [Japan] in 2002,’ he said. ‘They knocked us out of the World Cup in ‘98. What you’ve got with this game is an outstanding football history between the two and rivalry.
‘I’ve told the players this is a proud nation. And when you come up against a big powerful football nation, you are playing against history.
'When you talk about street football you are talking about South American players who have grown up with nothing. This is what this Argentinian team is. That’s what we’ve got to handle.’
This was supposed to be the free pass in England’s group and though the manager is already thinking ahead to the permutations of the knock-out stage, no-one is under any illusions about the feverish domestic reaction to the South American nation’s improbable draw against Japan.
School classes were suspended for pupils to watch the 0-0 draw in Paris. It was the first women’s game broadcast on Argentine national public radio and TV. There were mass viewings at universities.
Argentina coach Carlos Borrello deftly swerved a question about the Falklands War when it came up last night — ‘I think that this is all about football rivalry. I don’t think politics have a place’, he said — but the old narrative of rivalry still
