You say fallacy I say creative exageration 
This is so close to the right argument that we may close it there and be satisfied in respecting each other’s righ to be wrong wrong wrong .
(However I don’t the see the “avoiding bitterness” part anywhere, more the opposite to be honest)
I’m not sure I dare ask why such a fear of losing to England exists! I don’t want to stray off topic so I won’t ask further questions! Whatever happens I just really hope it isn’t a controversial VAR decision that is crucial.
Can you believe Messi has never played England, it’s incredible. The last time we played was a fantastic ‘friendly’ back in 2005, when Michael Owen (presumably not Mr Popular in Buenos Aires) scored a late winner. I guess Messi hadn’t quite become a regular at that point? He has of course played against many English club sides.
It strays into the extra-footballistic (is that a word? in Spanish we say “Extra-futbolistico”) for sure.
Whereas many here are trying to find a way to replicate the Hand of God without VAR being the spoiler (not really, but some of the jokes in that direction begin to feel like “ha ha, only serious”).
It is, I am as atheistic and rational as they come, in almost all aspects of life… but in football, I don’t know man, some things can make anyone doubt his (lack of) faith.
There’s no particular animosity against Owen here, the only thing against him being the shirt he wears in international Football, in fact the most common commentary on him was “Fuck! the English got a Pibe of their own”
So there are people calling the two semifinals “The Peninsular War” and “The Falkland Islands War” due to the participants.
Out of four possible finals, only one would have no previous war between the opponents - France vs. Argentina. England’s gone to war with France and Spain more times than you can count on your fingers, and Argentina’s guerra de la independencia threw off the Spanish yoke just over two centuries ago.
Nope, French and English fleets were involved in a war with Argentina in the mid 19th century for control of the fluvial commerce in the Parana and Uruguay rivers.
Argentina sort of “won” that war by outlasting them and making the whole enterprise unprofitable, even if most, if not all, the battles were won by the Anglo-French forces.
It may be of interest that the term guerrilla warfare (guerra de guerrillas) was allegedly first coined during the Napoleonic Wars in Spain, which we call Spain’s Independence War (Guerra de la Independencia Española) (curious that you call them Peninsular War, but yes, it makes sense seen from abroad). Napoleon even claimed that his downfall was due to the guerrilas in Spain, not to the much bloodier defeats in Russia. We’ll see soon whether that is a good omen for Spain.
I would not have put it that way. Frodo, perhaps.
With the paradoxical result that when I googled “Guerra de la indepencia” it brought me results about Spain as the “independizing” country, which from a South American perspective is just wrong
I get why it’s called that, but it still looks iffy to me, like they are trying to get into the independence band-wagon
Different perspectives 
If you look for Guerra de la Independencia Argentina (or Argentine War of Independence in English) you will find that it was not a war between Spain and Argentina, but a civil war between Argentinian Spanish Loyalists who called themselves realistas (that is: royalists, not realists) and Argentinian Independentists, who called themselves patriots.
There was no war between Spain and Argentina, Spain was an occupied country. Of the four nations in the semi-finals I would claim that Spain and Argentina are the only two who have never fought a war against each other.
But those Spanish Loyalists were fighting for Spain and all Spanish authorities were on their side, the fact that no peninsular troops were employed (because, as you say they were otherwise occupied fighting the French) doesn’t make the Spanish colonial troops fighting for Spain less Spanish.
But let’s stop this hijack here or we’ll spend the rest of the world cup in it.
Why? We’ve got plenty of time, the next game is the day after tomorrow.
Count me in your corner on this Frodo. (Of course when England and Argentina meet on the pitch, that’s where we part ways.)
I don’t think the rest of the people in this thread want to see us fight the war again for 20 posts, may be a new thread?
As is good and proper!
(Poking my head up from a rabbit hole) This was an outgrowth of The War of the Confederation? I guess if you have to sign a peace treaty to end it, it qualifies as a war… and a blockade is certainly an act of war.
In particular, it’s a very English way of looking at “the Spanish ulcer” as Napoleon put it.
Wellington made his fame on the Peninsula, which meant British authors were more invested in it than with the various battles of Central Europe - the Austerlitzes, Wagrams, and the like. The other piece of the Napoleonic Wars that loom large in the British imagination is Trafalgar, a potential direct threat to England itself.
It gave the British a very peripheral view of war in Europe, one that they had to give up in WWI and field a large army in Flanders, though they still employed troops in peripheral operations like Gallipoli, Macedonia, the Levant and Mesopotomia. That experience caused a great deal of butting heads between the U.S. in determining priorities for WWII, where the British wanted to employ the peninsula-type strategy and the U.S. wanted to go for the heart of Germany as soon as possible.
Anyway that’s a hijack of a hijack…
I would also note that Spain continued to claim Argentina as its possession for several decades afterward. (Though the English crown claimed France for 460 years, so…)
There were actual shots fired and troops disembarked fighting hand to hand, it was a proper war.
I’m lovin’ it!
[Moderating]
I know that soccer hooliganism can get pretty bad, but I think that what counts as a war, of what sort, between whom, is a little too off-topic for the World Cup thread.
My posts were about VAR not war.
What is it good for?