Scotland Fans Fill Glasgow Pubs to Cheer Argentina’s Win Over England

Argentina scored twice in the last seven minutes to beat England 2-1 in Atlanta on Wednesday, and pubs across Glasgow erupted like Scotland had won it instead. The result sent Lionel Messi’s Argentina into Sunday’s World Cup final against Spain. Scotland, knocked out at the group stage, had nothing riding on the outcome except the chance to watch England lose.

That mattered more than the football itself. Bookmakers say most Scottish money backed Argentina over England, and Glasgow sports shops sold out of Argentina jerseys they never expected to stock this summer.

Walkabout Bar Roars for Argentina, Not England

At Walkabout sports bar in Glasgow, fans stayed rapt through a tense, foul-heavy second half. Plenty wore Scotland shirts. Just as many wore Argentina’s sky-blue-and-white stripes.

Shannon McNulty, 24 and from Clydebank, told STV News the result was “absolutely brilliant.” Asked why she was cheering for Argentina rather than England, she said simply, “we’re Scottish.”

Seonaith MacDonald, 19 and from Glasgow, watched in an Argentina strip. At half time, with the score still goalless, he summed up what he was seeing.

A lot of bookings, a lot of fight. A lot of battle, a lot of grit.

“There’s quite a lot of history with this clash,” MacDonald added. The match lived up to that billing. Both sides tangled from the opening whistle, and referee Ismail Elfath, the first American to take charge of a World Cup semi-final, had booked a player from each team before half time.

Some fans in the bar picked out La Cuarta Estrella, the chant Argentina’s own supporters use as they chase a fourth star for the shirt, and piped it on bagpipes. The instrument was familiar even if the tune was not. Weeks earlier, the Tartan Army had led a bagpipe procession through Boston during Scotland’s own group-stage matches, a reputation for good-natured chaos that followed them into Glasgow’s pubs.

The same good humour surfaced during Euro 2024, when a supporter’s viral educational trip to Germany turned into a social media moment of its own.

The Money Backed Argentina Too

The scenes at Walkabout were not confined to one bar. The numbers back it up.

• 51% of Scottish-based bets on the semi-final went on Argentina, compared with 34% on England, according to Entain, the bookmaker that owns Ladbrokes and Coral.
• 31% of Scots told YouGov, in a poll taken before the tournament began, that they wanted England to do badly.
• Zero England shirts were for sale in three Glasgow sports shops checked the day before kickoff. Argentina strips filled the racks instead.

Argentina needed every bit of that support to survive. Anthony Gordon put England ahead in the 55th minute, and Argentina did not draw level until the 85th, finishing with 15 shots to England’s five. Atlanta Stadium held 68,239 fans for the finish.

“We had a challenging game, a challenging situation,” Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said afterward. “There was blood in the water, and we went for it.”

Little Sympathy for England in Glasgow

Not everyone in Glasgow’s pubs that night was rooting against England. Harrison Johnson, 23 and from Durham, watched anyway. “Absolutely cracking match tonight,” he told STV News. “It’s a shame that we’ve gone out, but I’m proud of our team making it to the semi-finals.”

Others found the mood harder to take. Ollie Kirkham, 37 and from Blackpool, was dismayed to hear Scots cheering for Argentina. “It’s just a bit heartbreaking, how the Scottish people treat us,” he said. “We would never, ever cheer for Scotland’s opponent.”

Serena Burton, 26 and from Nottingham, called herself “half and half” after supporting both nations through the tournament. “We did so well in the first half and as in the Euros we bottled it in the second half,” she said.

Jake Fraser, 34 and from Lincoln, was still confident at half time. “Argentina are just being dirty, but England are going to smash it,” he said. “They’re going to get a goal in the next half, hopefully 2-0 England.” England did score next. Argentina scored twice more.

A Rivalry That Outlasts Any Scoreline

Scotland and England have been doing this to each other since long before Argentina entered the picture. The two countries played what is recognised as the world’s first official international football match on 30 November 1872, at Hamilton Crescent in Partick, watched by an estimated 2,500 to 4,000 spectators, according to the Scottish Football Association.

England has been the Auld Enemy to Scotland ever since, a nickname rooted in centuries of cross-border conflict that predates football by a long way. Wednesday’s semi-final gave that old grudge a fresh outlet, layered with a few others.

• Football – the fixture with England is Scotland’s oldest rivalry, and losing to Argentina stung far less than losing to the country next door ever could.
• The Falklands – eight soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards died during the Battle of Mount Tumbledown in June 1982, a detail that complicated rather than simplified some Scots’ embrace of Argentina.
• Politics – Prime Minister Keir Starmer asked fans in Scotland and Wales to get behind England, while senior Scottish National Party figures pushed the opposite message.

George Adam, a senior figure in the Scottish National Party (SNP) and a member of the Scottish Parliament, urged Scots to “rejoice with our Argentinian friends.” He said there was “no better day to raise a glass to Argentina,” tying the match to Argentina’s decision to grant legal protection to Scotch whisky. That anniversary had actually fallen nearly two weeks earlier, on 3 July.

King Charles had already weighed in before kickoff, saying it might be “too much to hope” that the Tartan Army would “cheer with full voice” for England after Scotland’s own exit. Broadcaster Andrew Neil was one of the few prominent Scots who did exactly that.

Why Scotland Keeps Choosing Argentina over England

Most Scotland fans who wore Argentina’s colours on Wednesday wanted one outcome: England losing. Bookmakers, pollsters and empty shelves in sports shops all point to the same pattern, one that predates this World Cup by more than a century.

Hamish Husband, the Tartan Army’s organiser, doesn’t watch England games at all. He says the reasoning has nothing to do with individual players or managers. “England is our big brother, and sometimes you don’t want your big brother to do well, do you?” he told BBC Scotland News.

Not every Scotland fan agrees. Robbie McSkimming, 30 and from Dunfermline, has backed England in the later stages of tournaments for years, thanks to family across the border. “Growing up there wasn’t too much to cheer about for Scotland anyway,” he told BBC Scotland News, recalling the England players he watched on Match of the Day as a boy.

Argentina and England have made a habit of settling this kind of tension on football’s biggest stage.

England still leads the all-time series, with six wins to Argentina’s three and five draws across 14 meetings. Wednesday only narrowed the gap.

Argentina Moves on to Spain, England to a Playoff

Messi, 39, didn’t score on Wednesday but set up both Argentina goals, taking his tournament total to eight goals and two assists. He faces Spain for the first time in a competitive match on Sunday, in what could be his final World Cup appearance.

A win would make Argentina the first side to defend the World Cup since Brazil won back-to-back titles in 1958 and 1962. It would also be Argentina’s seventh World Cup final, second only to Germany’s eight.

Spain reached the final by beating France 2-0 and enters as the narrow favourite with bookmakers, having conceded only once all tournament. Argentina has scored in every match it has played.

England plays France in Saturday’s third-place match in Miami, a fixture few in Glasgow’s pubs were thinking about on Wednesday night.

It’s the fourth time in five major tournaments that England has gone out at the semi-final or final stage, after the Euro finals of 2020 and 2024 and the World Cup semi-final in 2018.

Argentina’s players left the pitch with a headache of their own. Midfielder Giovani Lo Celso unfurled a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas,” the Argentine name for the Falkland Islands, moments after full time. FIFA bans political messages inside its stadiums, and the banner could yet draw scrutiny from the governing body.

Sunday’s final will also carry the World Cup’s first-ever halftime show, curated by Coldplay’s Chris Martin and featuring Madonna, Shakira, Justin Bieber and BTS. Donald Trump, the US president, is expected to attend and present the trophy.

Argentina and Spain kick off the final at New York New Jersey Stadium, better known as MetLife Stadium, on Sunday at 8pm UK time. Messi will be chasing the fourth star that a few Glasgow pubs were already piping on bagpipes.