Argentina will attempt to stop football coming home tomorrow (as if) when they play England in the World Cup semi-finals.
Yet, while we’re more than 24 hours away from Harry Kane and his brave boys in white showing Messi who’s boss, old tensions are already rising online.
This time, though, fans aren’t arguing about Maradona’s infamous Hand of God or their run-in at the 1998 World Cup.
Instead, they’re discussing arguably the most controversial Top Gear episode ever and Jeremy Clarkson’s license plate – which allegedly referenced the Falklands War.
The episode in question is the Patagonia Special (2014), which saw Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May drive across Chile and Argentina.
This special garnered widespread media attention on its release after the Top Gear crew were targeted by protesters who believed the plate on Clarkson’s Porsche – which was H982 FKL – was a sly reference to the Falklands War and the year it took place.
Ultimately, the team were forced to flee Argentina after they were pelted with stones as they drove towards the Chilean border.
Clarkson and the Top Gear crew have always maintained that the number plate was not a deliberate reference to the Falklands War and was a random license plate.
Writing in The Sun at the time, Clarkson described the incident as ‘the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been involved in’, insisting it was ‘not just some kind of jolly Top Gear jape – this was deadly serious.’
So why’s the episode back in the public eye?
Well, ahead of the big fixture, @aggzzx on X shared a screenshot from the episode and captioned it ‘Locked in to some essential pre-match viewing’.
Since sharing the image, the post has been liked 16,000 times and sparked a lot of discussion online about whether Clarkson was deliberately trying to upset the Argentinians.
‘The hilarious thing about this is that Clarkson genuinely did not mean to wind them up,’ said @Marksism__.
‘Yeah, I am not buying that he didn’t notice the number plate. Not a chance,’ argued @Oakely_Dokely.
@NafonClover meanwhile claimed ‘if you look up that plate you will find that it has been with the car since it was manufactured.’
Others suggested that they didn’t plan for the plate but stuck with it once they got to Chile and saw the car.
‘All of them still pretend it was an accident, which is a bit weird,’ said @WFC_Will. ‘Obviously they didn’t go out of their way to find a car with a Falklands-related number plate, but they obviously thought it was funny once they happened to come across it.’
@mallard1938 agreed, writing: ‘The licence plate they knew might be a bit controversial, but they only noticed it after they got there, so to effectively delay and spend thousands to rebook everything in a few months would have been silly. Of course they weren’t to know, but it wasn’t quite Clarkson’s fault’
However, it was @monarchofrymden who had the most nuanced argument, saying ‘I hate Clarkson even if he did intend to wind them up, that’s not an excuse to try to murder the Top Gear crew.’
In 2015, the BBC concluded an investigation into the number plate, which ruled that it had not been a deliberate reference to the Falklands War and no further action was taken.
The Top Gear Patagonia Special is available to watch on BBC iPlayer now.