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"Our country has been through difficult experiences in terms of unity. Sport — football in particular — has the power to help that. It is a special feeling." - Gareth Southgate

On 27th June 2016, English football was clouded with the ash of an Icelandic boom. As eleven players collapsed onto the pitch in Nice, fury raced its way from Lands End to John O'Groats. In its wake, the rage left shards of victimised pint glasses in puddles of beer-drenched tears. Football wasn't coming home, England were. The nation's disconnect with the squad had never been worse.

Fast forward 145 days, and words of disconnect continue to pollute the country's papers. Teresa May's frail Brexit proposal has left the country hanging from a tightrope, with her own teammates scything away at the rope one resignation at a time. With the country in need of a hero, English football’s candidature is no more than low-hanging fruit for satire. Right?

Flip to the back pages and fall into a utopian parallel. On Sunday afternoon, England beat Croatia to qualify for the UEFA Nations League finals in Portugal next June. The national stadium finally became a cauldron of passion, representing a euphoric microcosm that banished the fear and uncertainty of the outside world. 

The victory at Wembley topped off an incredible year of transformation for the national team, who became arguably the first people ever to stick to the concept of 'new year, new me'. Kittens became lions, and it becamse, dare i say it, ‘cool’ to support England again.

superclásico

'For a century, one duel has halved Buenos Aires. The God of one half is the Devil of the other"

- Eduardo Galeano

Occasionally in life, the stars align. Shining specks in the night sky meet, forming patterns that are romanticised from the safety of planet Earth. Get a little closer - approximately 4.24 light-years closer - and a star bares its teeth. Face a ball of furiously burning gases, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star suddenly loses a touch of its charm.

Back down to Earth, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, two more combustible entities are set to collide. The constellation of the Copa Libertadores, South America's top club competition, has guided bitter rivals Boca Juniors and River Plate towards a stellar collision that will dwarf the magnitude of cosmic activity.

It's been 58 years since the inauguration of the Copa Libertadores, yet the first that has graced a final between Boca Juniors and River Plate. If fate wasn't clear enough, this year's final is the last that will be played over two-legs at each team's home ground, meaning that both Boca and River will take their turn to welcome their arch nemesis to their own, spitting cauldron.

The derby, the superclásico, is widely considered to be the greatest in world football, and is regularly dubbed the holy grail of the sport's 'bucket list'; attend a superclásico and you've done it all. Take a stroll through Buenos Aires and the presence of the two teams is unavoidable. Whether it be the ragged replica shirts, the branded shop fronts or the murals of Riquelme and Aimar, the city breathes from two lungs, one blue and yellow, the other red and white.