1990. An Argentina team riven with injuries, missing players through suspension and with the might of the host nation stacked against them hauls its way to the World Cup final.

It's an Albiceleste side with few friends, an ugly collection adept at the game's dark arts and no strangers to gritting out a victory on penalties. They will go on to sully the global showpiece against West Germany by having two players sent off and generally bitching their way through the 90 minutes.

There are not many similarities between the Argentina that reached the final of Italia 90 and the one that will take part in Sunday's showpiece in Lusail Stadium but three stand out: the respective teams are two of only three in World Cup history to lose their first match and reach the final. Not only did they suffer defeat but they did so in the most ignominious of circumstances. Argentina's loss to Saudi Arabia on November 22, was rated by bookmakers as the biggest shock in World Cup history. It was a reverse that rekindled memories of those aforementioned 1990 finals, when the then holders suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of nine-man Cameroon.

Another similarity concerned Argentina's star man at each of those finals: in 1990. Diego Maradona was a No.10 then considered among the greatest players of all time, should Lionel Messi guide Argentina to victory on Sunday he will close the debate for the time being on that particular rhetorical question. For what it's worth, Maradona's contribution to Argentina's World Cup final appearance all those years ago was mainly to inflame tensions with Napoli supporters following some barbed comments about how the rest of Italy hated them and they should support Argentina instead – similarly Messi has the chance to wound the country where he plays his football in the country that pays him his wages.

The final comparison between that team in 1990 and this one has been the tendency to write this Argentina team off. Thirty-two years ago, they entered the finals without Jorge Valdano, Jose Luis Brown, Oscar Ruggeri, Ricardo Giusti and were justifiably seen as a rag-tag team that required considerable good fortune to get out of their group following that defeat by Cameroon and two penalty shootouts to reach the final. But let's be clear about something: Lionel Scaloni's team won the Copa America by beating Brazil, everyone's overwhelming favourites for this World Cup, and they possess some of the best players playing in Europe at present, despite what some people might have you believe. And so we can only conclude that any comparisons with what happened 32 years ago are purely cosmetic.

The common narrative when Argentina had won the competition four years earlier was that Maradona achieved it single-handedly and there have been similar efforts to frame the team that has reached this year's final in a similar light. It is another unfair comparison given the quality of Messi's supporting case.

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There has been a repost doing the rounds on social media in recent days of Danny Murphy chatting about how many Argentina players would make it into the England starting line-up. Murphy eventually suggests that two would be the limit. Given the respective achievements of each side at these finals, it's a laughable assertion.

Argentina have in their ranks a goalkeeper who almost single handedly kept Aston Villa in the Premier League two seasons ago (and, indeed, was named club player of the season that year), a former Serie A defender of the year, a central midfielder whom Murphy's beloved Liverpool are sniffing around, one of the Premier League's most exciting attacking midfielders and a striker who was named South American footballer of the year in 2021.

Of course, underpinning everything Argentina have done at this World Cup has been the brilliance of Messi but that is not a reason to castigate the rest of the side. There is a curious obsession among football supporters – and pundits – to advance the idea that a team is not as good without its best players or, in this case, the best player of all time. It is an exercise in hypothetical futility and rhetoric: what if he gets injured, what if his legs fall off and he grows flippers instead, what if he hadn't played football every waking minute as a kid and became the best footballer of all time.

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This is how football works: a manager picks his best players and hopes that they will be good enough to beat the other team's best players.

Sunday at Lusail, will determine just whether it is Argentina or, indeed, France who can lay claim to that particular title. Drawing significant comparisons, however, with the Argentina of 1990 – or a fictional Danny Murphy England XI – and Messi's Argentina is purely disingenuous and, ultimately, utterly pointless.

The Herald:

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