The fervent chanting of Argentine fans inside stadiums during the Qatar World Cup and the almost hysterical celebrations at home demonstrates Argentina’s passion for football.
Here are five keys to understanding Argentina’s almost one-of-a-kind relationship with the sport ahead of Sunday’s World Cup final in Doha, where Argentina will face France: Argentina’s AFA football association, founded in 1893, boasts that it is “the oldest in South America and eighth oldest in the world” when football became futbol.
Football showed up in the country with English settlers, large numbers of who came to chip away at the railways and who was named “the insane English” when they began kicking around a ball during their breaks.
Alexander Watson Hutton, a Scottish teacher, is regarded as the “father” of Argentine football for incorporating the sport into his schools’ physical education classes.
He was likewise AFA’s most memorable president.
historic football clubs
Some of the most historic football clubs, such as Rosario’s Newell’s Old Boys and Banfield in Buenos Aires, still compete in the Argentine top flight today. British railway workers started forming football clubs shortly.
Argentina’s football school, which would later produce Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, developed its own “criollo” style of play based less on British values of physical discipline and more on elegance, ability, and inspiration with the influx of Italian and Spanish immigrants.
Fans quickly idolized the initial stars of this “different” style, despite numerous legends and only one God (to date).
Vicente Zito, Natalio Perinetti, and Francisco Varallo all graced Argentine fields in the 1930s. Italo-Argentine Luis Monti also played for Argentina in the 1930 World Cup, where they lost to Uruguay but won it four years later for Italy.
Since then, players like Angel Labruna, Tucho Mendez, Jose Manuel Moreno, Ubaldo Fillol, Daniel Passarella, Mario Kempes, Gabriel Batistuta, and Roman Riquelme have won awards and captivated fans: The Albiceleste have won the Copa America a record 15 times, as well as the World Cup in 1978 and 1986.
D10S
One legend stands out above all others thus far: Diego Maradona, more commonly referred to as “D10S,” is a play on the Spanish word for God (“Dios”) and the number 10 on his jersey.
If Messi somehow happened to imitate Maradona by winning the World Cup, he would match his ancestor’s status.
“Fans have taken Messi to their souls, as Diego,” antiquarian Felipe Pigna told AFP.
“During his fantastic motivational speech in the changing rooms prior to winning the Copa America in Brazil in 2021, he demonstrated leadership qualities,”
The best and worst Argentine fans are both well-known for their fervent enthusiasm and the gloomy atmosphere of rioting.
With a variety of football songs, “Hinchas” is a loud and happy addition to the stadium atmosphere. Their World Cup anthem, “Muchachos,” is a tribute to Messi and Maradona, as well as the country’s obsession with the Falkland Islands.
Some songs are upbeat, while others criticize Brazil or the English language.
However, in addition to inheriting British terrace chants, Argentine club football has also adopted the worst hooliganism from English football.
Every season, led by the “barras bravas,” who looks a lot like the mafia, there is sometimes deadly violence around matches.
As a result, stadiums have been closed to away fans since 2013.
The government of Argentina even provided Qatar with a “blacklist” of 6,500 individuals to exclude from stadiums.
Unifying identity football is more than just a sport in Argentina.
It is deeply ingrained in the “barrios,” which are the communities in which the football club is an essential part of daily life.
According to Ariel Scher, a writer, and university lecturer, “football takes a lot of space and is very important in daily life here.”
Football, along with Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands, is one of the few things that unites all Argentines in a country with a lot of inequality and political division.
Celebration spot The 67.5-meter-tall Obelisk in the middle of Buenos Aires has become a pilgrimage destination for football celebrations.
It began during Argentina’s first World Cup victory in 1978 when the South American nation was ruled by a brutal military dictatorship.
People would go to the Obelisk to celebrate and briefly forget the oppression after watching World Cup matches in nearby movie theaters.
It was built in 1936 on the site of an old church. In August 1812, Argentina’s flag flew for the first time in Buenos Aires.
It was first mentioned a few months earlier in Rosario, Messi’s birthplace, near the Parana River, where the National Flag Memorial is now located and where Rosarinos go to celebrate after a match.