By Jamie Ralph 

Much has been written about the football rivalry between England and Argentina. Its roots trace back to an infamous game in 1966, when the recently deceased Antonio Rattín received the first red card in World Cup history, and it was sharpened further by the Falklands/Malvinas Conflict in 1982 and the meetings between the two sides at the 1986, 1998 and 2022 World Cups. 

That rivalry, though, came much later than the English influence that first shaped Argentine football. Mass emigration from Britain to South America in the 1800s, driven by the promise of land and economic opportunity, brought with it the new sports of rugby and association football. First played among railway workers building the country’s new networks, teams soon formed clubs of their own — among them Buenos Aires Football Club in the capital, and in Rosario, Rosario Central. 

Five years before Rosario Central’s foundation in 1895, an Englishman named Isaac Newell — who had emigrated to Argentina from Kent in 1869 — established the Anglo Argentine Commercial College with his wife, Anna. Initially a primary school, it soon added a secondary offering, and football became part of college life. 

A sporting team called Club Atlético Newell’s School was formed by students in the late 1890s, but it wasn’t until 1903 that Isaac’s son Claudio, together with a group of fellow alumni, founded a club that would exist independently of the school — naming it Club Atlético Newell’s Old Boys in tribute to its Kentish founder. 

Isaac died in 1907, just four years after the club’s foundation, but his legacy has proven immense. Four of the central figures in Argentina’s pursuit of a fourth World Cup began their football careers at Newell’s Old Boys. Manager Lionel Scaloni and his assistant Walter Samuel both came through the club’s academy, debuting for the first team in the mid-1990s before departing for celebrated careers in Europe. Manchester United’s Lisandro Martínez also made his professional debut at Newell’s, featuring for the first team before coach Juan Manuel Llop deemed him too small and sold him to divisional rivals Defensa y Justicia. Martínez has been one of Argentina’s best players at this World Cup, chipping in with an assist and a goal against Cape Verde in the Round of 32 and making countless goal-saving tackles at the other end. The most famous Old Boy of all, Lionel Messi, joined the club as a six-year-old in 1994, scoring 234 goals as a youth player before his move to Barcelona in 2000. Newell’s recently renamed a stand at their stadium after the unstoppable genius. 

Beyond the current squad, Newell’s alumni have long shaped the national team’s story. Gabriel Batistuta, Mauricio Pochettino, Maxi Rodríguez and Jorge Valdano all began their careers at the club — each going on to face England, or work in the country, at various points in their own footballing lives. 

Newell’s remain quietly proud of their English origins. An alternate badge, used on some shirts, features the Union Jack, while a bust of Isaac Newell still stands outside their stadium, the Estadio Marcelo Bielsa, named for the club’s most successful manager. The club frames its own history as inseparable from that of Argentine football itself, under the slogan “Somos Pioneros” (“We are Pioneers”). When Diego Armando Maradona joined Newell’s in 1993, he said his primary reason for choosing the club was that “Newell’s is the history of football.” 

Isaac Newell’s name is known throughout Argentine football, but in his country of birth, recognition remains slight. Changing that has been the driving aim of the Isaac Newell Heritage Group in recent years. Formed in Kent to honour Newell through the eventual erection of a statue in his birthplace of Strood, the group’s work began in earnest with the 2022 exhibition in Rochester, which showcased artefacts from Newell’s Old Boys’ history alongside the story of its founder.

Since then, the group has registered the domain isaacnewell.com to host information about Isaac’s life, overseen the renaming of several football pitches in Kent after Newell’s legends, and seen the trophy awarded to winners of the Kent & District Football League renamed the Isaac Newell Trophy. Among its members is Amanda Thomas, a published author currently working on a full biography of Isaac’s life, drawing on new research uncovered along the way. The statue itself has yet to materialise, but under the Heritage Group — led by Jon Rye, a longstanding figure in Kent sports development — progress continues to build. 

None of it would have happened without the vision of Adrian Pope, a Kent native who stumbled on the Newell story while travelling in Argentina in the early 2000s. Invited by a local to attend a football match, he noticed the opposing side were called Newell’s Old Boys. Days later, at an internet café, he searched for the origin of the name and was startled to find it traced back to his own home patch. He has spent the years since spreading word of Isaac Newell’s influence on Argentine football and hopes a permanent statue will one day remind people in Kent that the club which first nurtured the greatest footballer of all time would never have existed without a Man of Kent. 

As Argentina take the field on Wednesday to face England, one person with ties to both countries is Margarita Bittetti Newell, Isaac’s great-great-granddaughter.

She admitted disappointment that so much of the media build-up to the tie has dwelt on rivalry rather than on the two countries’ shared, and largely positive, football history.

“Isaac’s dream when he came to Argentina was first and foremost to offer a high standard of education for all, but secondary to that was to use the sport of football to unite the different communities in Rosario at the time. Many British and Irish people had arrived in this new country not speaking the language, and through football, Isaac wanted to help these new arrivals integrate with the local population. Football was the perfect platform for that.”

Margarita often wonders what her great-great-grandfather would make of the modern game, and of how football has developed in Argentina since his time. She points out how many of the current squad have their own English ties, with several players’ children born there:

“Lionel Scaloni was a player in England, and players like Enzo Fernández, Alexis Mac Allister and Cristian Romero all live and make their living there now. I understand a footballing rivalry developed after the Falklands/Malvinas conflict and the 1986 game, but overall, I think we have more in common than we’d like to admit.”

Margarita has been heavily involved in the Isaac Newell Heritage Group’s push to erect a statue of her ancestor in Kent, but she’s quick to point out that England already holds a tribute to her family.

Lionel Newell, one of Isaac’s sons, travelled to England in 1908 seeking medical treatment. An outstanding player in the early days of the club named after his father, he succumbed to illness while undergoing treatment, dying at just 24. He is buried in Wells, Somerset, where a group of Newell’s Old Boys fans travelled some years ago to decorate his grave with club memorabilia.

Margarita can’t resist noting the recurrence of one name through the club’s history.

“Lionel Scaloni, Lionel Messi and Lionel Newell! There is something about that name.”

It’s a fitting echo, given how much of Newell’s history has been carried by men who never met but share more than a name. 

From a schoolteacher’s dream of uniting Rosario’s immigrant communities through football, to a club that would go on to produce a World Cup-winning captain, manager and coaching staff, the Newell name has quietly threaded its way through Argentine football for over a century.

As England and Argentina meet again on Wednesday, much will be made of old rivalries. But somewhere in Strood, and in Rosario, the descendants of a Kent schoolteacher will be watching a different story: one of a boy from Newell’s academy who became the greatest player of all time, and the small English town still waiting for its own tribute to the man who made it all possible. 

— Jamie Ralph runs the Newell’s Old Boys – English account and is a Newell’s socio based in Ireland who has appeared on BBC, Talksport and numerous podcasts to talk about his love of the Rosario club. Find him on Twitter/X and Bluesky.