Lionel Messi's Argentina: you either love them loathe them - Nick Westby

No nation in football is as polarising as Argentina, a team and a culture that has the ability to mesmerise and disgust in equal measure.

Friday night’s compelling quarter-final with the Netherlands offered a window into their World Cup history.

In a game between two grand old rivals that crackled with tension from the national anthems, you had the beauty of Lionel Messi’s no-look pass for the first goal mixed in with Leandro Paredes booting the ball into the Dutch dugout, the muscular brawn of Marcos Acuna rampaging down the left contrasting with that rascal Nicolas Otamendi goading the men in orange when the winning penalty had been struck.

Twas ever thus with the boys in blue and white.

From the days of Antonio Rattin getting sent off against England in the 1966 quarter-final, to allegations of bribery under a political dictatorship in 1978, when hosts Argentina put six past Peru to advance to a final remembered for the ticker-tape and Mario Kempes dancing through the Dutch defence.

Then there’s Diego Maradona who embodied the good and the bad – or should that be wondrous and downright dirty – of Argentinian football when he punched one in in their 1986 quarter-final with England and then four minutes later scored arguably the greatest goal in the history of the World Cup.

There has been many a show of good sportsmanship at this World Cup, of players and managers advancing societal debate while retaining the principles of fair play.

If you want that from Argentina, you’re looking in the wrong place.

They’re football’s villains, a role throughout history they have played to a tee. They’re at it again out in Qatar, and the latter stages of the tournament are all the better for it.

So whether you want the nasty so-and-sos to be on the first plane back to Buenos Aires after tonight’s semi-final with Croatia, or you want to see Messi lift the one prize that would end the argument of who is the player of the generation between him and Cristiano Ronaldo, Argentina remain box office.