Banfield  3  Argentinos Juniors  0

This was the resumption of the second game of the season, called off after eight minutes because of torrential rain. And it looked to me like the Argentinos Juniors players never really dried out. Banfield are the current champions and it showed. They were snappy, they were hungry and they enjoyed their football. They never allowed the visitors time on the ball and when they won it they always had options, always had players running into space.

I must confess that I didn’t go to this game – a 9.30pm kickoff in one of Buenos Aires’s nether regions and the prospect of a late night trip home on public transport didn’t exactly set my red and white blood racing. And the game was live on state-run television. All the first division games are live on TV under a government-financed scheme introduced last year to bring football back to the masses and win tens of thousands of votes into the bargain. They’d have mine, I thought as I settled down with a cold beer and a bowl of crisps, if I had one.

There are two things and two things only that guarantee almost total agreement in Argentina – support for the national football team and the knowledge that the Falkland Islands, Las Islas Malvinas, are rightfully theirs and should be returned forthwith.

A British company, Desire Petroleum, has just moved its drilling platform, the Ocean Guardian, into place about one hundred kilometres off the islands in the search for oil. Lovely, slushy crude oil. Some say there may be as many as 60 billion barrels in them there treacherous waters. But I suspect that’s a crude, slushy estimate. Ask yourself, how can anyone with any certainty know how much of anything lies under the sea bed beneath several hundred metres of some of the wildest waters on the planet? And it won’t be down there in 60 billion neatly-packed barrels either. Sixty-billion barrels of wishful thinking on the part of some oil executive with a model rig on his desk and a dream of owning a much bigger car.

The Ocean Guardian is putting down its roots as the Argentine government flounders in turbulent waters of its own. Inflation is rampant, although official figures say it’s not, the government is losing control to the opposition in the two houses of parliament and President Cristina Kirchner and her husband, Néstor, the previous president, are being accused of dodgy dealings. And there are elections next year.

The national football team, with Maradona at the helm, looks increasingly like a colony of penguins which can’t find its fish. They’re unlikely to bring Argentina together in wild rejoicing in July. So the Falklands will have to do. It’s a sure-fire winner, just as long as they don’t go overboard and send in the troops like they did in 1982. That just upsets people.

The Malvinas is an issue here. School text books show them as Argentine property. As you leave airports and cross borders, the first thing to welcome you into the country are signs reading: “Las Malvinas son Argentinas.” The bus that takes me to the Argentinos Juniors ground goes down a street called The Malvinas Combatants and there’s a particularly good ice-cream parlour around the corner from my house called: Las Malvinas, which does a very tasty sheep and penguin flavour cone. To tell the truth, it doesn’t, but it should do.

There are active Falkland war veterans groups across the country. They differ over whether the 1982 invasion by the then military government was a good idea or not. They criticise subsequent governments for the treatment they’ve received. Hundreds of veterans have committed suicide, unable to fit back into a society that labelled them as losers or as unwitting tools of a repressive regime. Some former soldiers are suing their officers for human rights abuses, saying as well as being under-trained and poorly equipped for battle, they were abused and sometimes tortured. But, like 99.9 percent of all Argentines, they all agree that Las Malvinas son Argentinas.

The British established their presence there in 1833 in the days when the fellow with the biggest ship and the most cannons could thrust his country’s flag into the ground and claim pretty much anywhere outside of Europe for king and country, while just a few stray penguins looked on. The Spanish wanted them, the French wanted them and, when the Spanish left, the fledgling Argentina said they wanted them. They are, after all, the closest – by several thousand kilometres.

The sticking point has always been the residents, the kelpers as the Argentines call them, none too kindly. They want to stay British in a very steak and kidney pie, Enid Blyton, tea and cricket on a Sunday afternoon sort of way.

They use Argentina’s long history of economic chaos and military repression as a reason for not swapping Queen and country for tango and big, juicy steaks. If the Falklands did became Las Malvinas then within weeks the driving would get much worse, inexplicable queues would form at the post office and government buildings would become swamped in bureaucracy. There would also be more beauty parlours and hairdressers, pubs would also be open longer and children would be allowed in.

But if you take a look at Argentine demographics you’ll see that the majority of the forty-million population lives in and around Buenos Aires. Vast expanses of Patagonia in the south and the hot, northern provinces are almost bereft of human habitation. So how many Argentines would actually go and live in the Falklands?

It used to be about how much of the world map you could claim as your own. Now it’s all about oil. If the United States and Britain invaded Iraq under the false justification of weapons of mass destruction, they’re not going to let a few whingeing Argies stop them from extracting a possible 60 billion barrels from the South Atlantic.

Argentina has the support of the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, appealed directly to Queen Elizabeth to give the islands back. Argentina has gone to the United Nations. Tension is high. But Argentina won’t be invading this time.

The government, with its many faults and problems, is a democratic one and proud of it. The military, defeated and disgraced in the 1980s, is not the force it was and doesn’t have the stomach or the hardware for a fight.

There’ll be plenty of shouting and some frenzied flag waving. But if it’s a result Argentines are looking for, then it looks like the pressure is back on Diego, Leo, Carlitos and Javier to deliver the goods in South Africa later this year.