In professional rugby, fear of the unknown has been replaced by an even scarier phenomenon – knowledge that your opponent might just be better. Where early World Cups were filled with surprise results – most notably two different iterations of Samoa stunning Wales – there is now so much footage of even the lowest-ranked nations that analysts can pore over hours of tape of their opposition.

For England in Marseille on Saturday evening, Argentina will provide little surprise, with six of their starting XV plying their trade in the Premiership and another four on the bench. The problem for England is that they know exactly how good Julián Montoya, the Pumas captain, can be. After all, he was the heartbeat of the Leicester side that Steve Borthwick, the England coach, led to the title last summer. Meanwhile every outside back in England got a glimpse of the electric feet of Mateo Carreras, the Newcastle Falcons winger.

Turn the clock back 16 years, and it was France who found themselves in a similar position. The 2007 hosts took on Argentina in the World Cup opener at the Stade de France, with nine Pumas starters then at Top 14 clubs. The Argentina coach at the time, Marcelo Loffreda, used that to his advantage, playing on the fear of the France players. Who better to ask about the situation England face? “We knew that first game was going to be a battle,” he said. “Beyond the physical side, it was going to be a mental battle.

“We had a lot of players who played their rugby in France so those players were well known to their opponents. Clearly, there is a psychological aspect which I think got into the heads of the French players. They were thinking: ‘I’ve played with this guy, he’s really good, he never gives up and will do everything to win.’ Those psychological aspects unquestionably had an impact in the games against France.”

It certainly worked in 2007, with Argentina stunning France in the opening game, and then doing so again in the third-place playoff on their way to their best finish at a World Cup. That time around, they were underdogs in both encounters, despite the work that Loffreda and his coaching team had done to prepare.

At the Stade Vélodrome on Saturday evening, there is little to pick between the teams, with Argentina higher ranked according to World Rugby, but England having won all three previous meetings at the World Cup, including four years ago in Japan.

So will the fear factor of familiarity make the difference this time around? For Loffreda, the contrasting mindsets between English and French rugby may be the saving grace for Borthwick. He said: “There is a similarity between 2007 and the current Argentina team with the number of players in the squad who play club rugby in England.

“The question you have to ask though, is that on one side you have the Latin players, the Argentinians, the French for example. Then on the other side are the English, the Anglo-Saxons. There is a difference in the way they think about situations and they quite often act in different ways.

“There was a big influence on the French players in the 2007 World Cup. I’m not sure if there will be the same influence on the English players when they come against their club colleagues in the opening game. The Anglo‑Saxon mindset is colder, they don’t allow the emotions to play such a big role and just get on with the job at hand.

“I expect England to be a really, really tough match. Perhaps the hardest of all. They will be hurting from the game they played against Fiji, from the injuries and the suspensions they are dealing with but a wounded England is incredibly dangerous.”

Loffreda’s 2007 side will go down as one of Argentina’s greatest. Their third-place finish opened the door to the Rugby Championship and allowed Los Pumas to take a place at World Rugby’s top table. That was instigated by their captain turned administrator, Agustín Pichot, the scrum-half who led from the front on the field and off it.

So when Loffreda compares the current captain, Montoya, to Pichot, it is high praise. Although he stepped down as coach after eight years in charge in 2007 to take over at Leicester, Loffreda recently spent time as team manager for Los Pumas and got a firsthand view of how Montoya has driven this Argentina side to new heights – including landmark wins over the All Blacks.

Loffreda said: “Julián Montoya is a brilliant player, and beyond his ability as a hooker and his constant drive to improve, he is incredibly humble. I think that is very important for a captain of one’s country. He has this capacity to bring people together and to demand that they give everything, but he does so implicitly because he gives everything himself. In that sense, he reminds me of my first captain, Agustín Pichot who had a similar ability to get the best out of people.”