So the team’s goalkeeper, Héctor Zelada, suggested something simple: go check Tepito, a big street market in Mexico City known for cheap goods. Two staff members went down and came back with blue polyester shirts, close enough to the real thing. Overnight, the kit staff sewed on the Argentina badges and ironed on the numbers. It wasn’t neat work.

Some numbers came out crooked. But by morning, the team had a wearable kit.

Diego Maradona was one of the players who helped pick the final version from the options they had. Nobody recorded him saying anything dramatic about it. He just wore it.

Argentina won 2-1. In that match, Maradona scored the “Hand of God” goal and, a few minutes later, ran the length of the pitch and scored what’s still called the greatest individual goal in World Cup history. He did both wearing a shirt that had been sitting in a market stall the day before. That shirt later sold at auction for over seven million pounds, the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia ever sold.

Twelve years later, in 1998, Argentina met England again in the same navy away kit. This time, it was a round-of-16 match in France. Michael Owen scored a goal that made him famous overnight, running past three defenders on his own. David Beckham got sent off for a small kick that looked worse on replay. The match went to penalties. Argentina won again.

Two knockout matches against England in this kit. Two wins. That’s where the “lucky shirt” idea against England really comes from. It’s not a myth built on nothing; it’s built on two real results. But take that same kit away from England, and the story flips completely.

In the 1990 final, Argentina wore the away kit against West Germany. They lost 1-0 to a late penalty. Two Argentina players were sent off before the game ended.

In 2006, the quarter-final, the same navy kit, the same opponent: Germany. Argentina lost again, this time on penalties.

In 2014, the final in Brazil. Argentina in the away kit, Germany again. The match stayed goalless until extra time, when Mario Götze scored the winner. Argentina lost their third final in this kit.

Three finals or knockout losses in the away kit, all against Germany in some form.

So is the kit lucky or unlucky? It depends entirely on who’s standing on the other side. Against England, Argentina have never lost a knockout match in this kit. Against Germany, they’ve never won one. It’s probably just coincidence that a good penalty is a good penalty, no matter what colour shirt you’re wearing when you concede it. But four decades of results lining up this cleanly is hard for fans to ignore.

Tomorrow, the rivalry resumes. England and Argentina meet again, and Argentina will once again wear the dark navy shirt. For England fans, that shirt brings back memories of Maradona, heartbreak, and penalty shoot-outs gone wrong. For Argentina fans, it brings back memories of triumph and two wins they still talk about decades later.

Of course, none of that history guarantees anything tomorrow. Bukayo Saka wasn’t born when Maradona scored those two goals in 1986. Jude Bellingham wasn’t on the pitch in Saint-Étienne in 1998. And on the other side, Lionel Messi is still playing, still leading this Argentina team, still trying to add one more chapter to a career that already has almost everything in it. This isn’t a changing of the guard so much as old genius and new talent sharing the same stage.

But football has always left room for strange coincidences like this one. Sometimes those coincidences fade away. Sometimes they turn into tradition. And once in a while, they start to feel like something closer to fate.

Tomorrow, ninety minutes will decide whether the navy shirt adds one more win to its record against England, or whether this England team finally breaks a pattern that’s followed them for almost forty years. Either way, when Argentina walks out in blue tomorrow, they won’t just be wearing a football shirt. They’ll be carrying one of the World Cup’s strangest and most enduring stories with them.