hello! earnestly, i think this video from al jazeera described it well - but overall, as a country, especially interactions between argentina fans and black people and players have been very racist. i know a group of people doesn’t represent a country, but it’s overwhelming and very publicly too. it left a bad taste in my mouth.
as a team, they also play unsportsmanlike and corruptly in the world cup - just yesterday, enzo fernandez delivered a hit in the back of england’s elliot anderson’s head and no foul. and then messi wrestled with jude bellingham on the field and still no foul. and that’s just ONE game. don’t get me started on cape verde or egypt. fifa has been extremely bias and blatant with their favoritism toward argentina which sours my enjoyment of them as a whole.
lastly, as a representative and icon of argentina, messi is a zionist. supporting and working with israel even though what they’re doing is a blatant genocide of palestinians. why would i want to support that?
Okay, it took me a while to answer this because I wanted to do it as eloquently and factually as I could.
This will be long, I'm sorry, but I hope people take the time to read through (and take the time to go through the compilation of information) instead of believing the misinformation being spread online.
Look, I'm not denying that Argentina has racist people and history (because we do, like literally every single country does), but the amount of misinformation being spread is, at this point, not only harmful but even dehumanizing.
As for the video:
1- The woman talks about Latin America in general, specifically mentioning Argentina and Paraguay, yet people act like Argentina is the only country in the wrong in the entire world.
2- The chant was absolute shit, yes, but that doesn't mean the entire country thinks that way. It was criticized by a lot of Argentines who also found it offensive. Acting like this is the only insulting chant that has ever existed is insane when there have been plenty of chants all over the world that have been racist or homophobic for decades.
3- From what I can hear and see, the Argentinian woman doesn't call Speed the n-word; that's a mistranslation. She says "pelotudo", which here is a word interchangeable with estupido/stupid, and is one of the lamest insults ever. She means it as an insult, yes, but here we call our friends that (we literally use these as "dude", same as "boludo"), and it has nothing to do with race. I think she might have said "conchudo" at one point too, which is also not a racist insult.
Also, she does say "go home" (usually meant as a jab to the other team supporters, even between Argentines, when the match is over and the winning team fans stay to celebrate), but she doesn't say "go back to your country".
4- While there is history about the country going through a "blanqueamiento", we learn about how wrong this was in school from a young age and, at least in the two different schools I went to, learn to appreciate our aboriginal roots (I personally loved to celebrate Pachamama and still do). We're also very proud of our own culture (you can see pictures of traditions we follow from elementary school here), and most of us don't actually consider ourselves "European whites".
In fact, most of us are not considered black or white or aboriginal, but "mestizos" (literally "mixed"), but not just because of the blanqueamiento (which happened in a lot of Latin American countries, not just Argentina, btw).
Argentina stated the "Freedom of Wombs" (Libertad de vientres) in 1813, which stated that the children born from slaves brought by our Spaniard colonizers would be born free (while Spain and other colonies only stated this law in 1869), and achieved complete slavery abolition by 1853, guaranteeing freedom to slaves in our country as well as any enslaved person entering it. And since segregation wasn't a thing here, most of us are therefore mixed either with European or African due to immigration (Argentina had a smaller amount of enslaved people brought over by Spain, some of which died due to sickness or as soldiers) or with Aboriginal roots, or all three.
For example, Argentine football player Cristian "Cuti" Romero has a skin tone slightly lighter than Jude Bellingham's, and Maradona, one of our most famous players, has white, Aboriginal, and African roots.
I, for example, have the darkest skin tone in my friend group, but the lightest in my family. Since we have mixed so much throughout history, most of us don't actually know our roots, which is why most of us are simply Argentine.
Saying we're all racist also doesn't make sense when we have beloved national heroes Juan Bautista Cabral (of Zambo origin and a highly respected soldier in our history who fought with San Martín and saved his life) and Maria Remedios Del Valle (a renowned soldier literally known as "Mother of the Homeland", she's on our $10.000 bills along with Manuel Belgrano).
Everyone is currently acting like every single Argentine person is violently racist, and that's an insane generalization when we are, and have always been, an extremely diverse country, especially when there are actual PoC who actually are from Argentina (or have spent time here, something many of the people that talk about us haven't actually done) that are trying to tell people the opposite, as shown below:
user @maitemalen on growing up in Argentina
user @vital_mendess2 on living in Argentina
user @ilhagrande.paravos on growing up Argentine and being mixed
user @bellainargentina on being Jamaican and living in Argentina
user @bellainargentina talking about the anti-Argentina propaganda
user @ch0co687 listing Afro-Argentine football players
user ch0co687 about important Afro-Argentine figures and law
user @jsystjn on "who's more racist?"
user @zurilym on why she supports Argentina
user @maniludiaries on growing up Argentine and moving to the US
user @maniludiaries on what happened to Argentina's black population
user @momoizioofficial on who he should support
user @jordaine.wisdom on traveling to Argentina
user @lejanspinola on working in Argentina vs Brazil
user @sofiasmoments1 on Argentina's diversity
user @tupanaconbarba on how Argentines treat immigrants
user @josphina_lfc on who to support
user @yafrereyes about Argentine solidarity
user @aribalanga on the way Argentines treat people
user @lennonknowsball on getting told he wouldn't be welcome in Argentina
And here are some interactions that have been happening in the US as well, both with black people and with people who support the teams Argentina has played against:
Argentines making the cops dance and celebrate with them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Argentines celebrating with the mayor of Atlanta
Argentina and Cabo Verde fans celebrating together after the match
Argentines celebrating with an England fan
Argentine fans hugging an England fan before celebrating
Argentines with Switzerland fans, chanting "the Swiss is Argentine", which is done as a way to celebrate together: 1, 2
We sometimes jokingly call these baptisms because, as we usually say, "El Argentino nace donde quiere", meaning "An Argentine is born where they want to"; we always say this because we welcome anyone who loves our culture to be part of it.
It's literally part of our National Constitution. The Argentine Constitution grants foreigners the same civil rights as citizens. According to Article 20, foreigners can freely work, own and sell property, navigate rivers, practice their religion, marry, and make wills. Furthermore, Article 25 obligates the federal government to encourage European immigration and explicitly prohibits placing restrictions or taxes on foreigners arriving to work in agriculture, industry, or the sciences. They can also access free Healthcare and Public University education (it's extremely normal for people from other countries to come study at the National University of Córdoba), same as any Argentine.
Also, here you have some of the players' sportsmanship:
Messi taking photos with the Cabo Verde players during an interview after the match
This video, which includes the Argentine DT, Scaloni, hugging and congratulating the Cabo Verde DT, Argentine fans clapping for Cabo Verde, Dibu Martinez helping a player up and congratulating Vozinha for the game, and Messi stopping an interview to take pictures with the Cabo Verde players (again).
Messi consoling Neymar at the Copa America 2021
Dibu Martinez going to hug and console the Ecuadorian goalkeeper after noticing he's crying
Argentine players congratulating Colombia after the 2024 CONMEBOL final
(and Argentine fans consoling a Colombian fan)
Angel Di Maria congratulating the Colombian players one by one after the 2024 CONMEBOL final
Argentine players talking about looking out for each other
Dibu Martinez helping Mbappé and congratulating him after the last World Cup's final
Lisandro Martinez and Angel Di Maria congratulating the French players after the last World Cup's final
Lisandro Martinez congratulating Cabo Verde before celebrating
Here's a few videos of England fans' sportsmanship too:
England fan telling a reporter "my dad killed your dad" (mocking the soldiers of the Malvinas war)
Now deleted video about how this guy wants to call ICE
England fan hitting Argentina fans
News reporter mocking poverty and unemployment in Argentina
Now, I'm sorry, I don't want to be disrespectful, but saying that the World Cup is biased and favors Argentina is, at this point, an excuse that people are using to further diminish Argentina. I'm not gonna focus on this a lot because I honestly don't think it's the important conversation to have.
The game between Argentina and England was always going to be this rough; we all knew it was more than a game. And yes, Enzo Fernandez should have been fouled (he wasn't because the referee had already stopped the match due to another foul), absolutely, but don't act like England was playing fair either.
Here you can see:
Bellingham kneeing Messi (which should have been a foul because there was no intention/attempt to touch the ball behind it), Fernandez being forcefully held down to stop him from playing, which should have been a foul, Simeone getting pushed by Pickford for no reason, Tagliafico getting tackled (which should have been a foul), Bellingham smacking Barco's head after the match, and a bunch of plays that should have been fouls.
Here's another video of Jude Bellingham smacking the head of Barco (who didn't even play and wasn't paying attention to him) at the end of the match.
Also, here's Rice covering his mouth to speak to Messi and McAllister, which, according to FIFA's actual rules, is an immediate red card, so he's lucky that the referee ignored him and the Argentina players decided not to complain (he also did this with Fernandez).
At the end of the day, England got only one yellow card while Argentina got three, and eleven fouls compared to Argentina's fifteen.
There are also people falling for an AI-altered photo of Messi stepping on Spence's foot (you can tell it's AI clearly because his shirt number appears as 23 instead of 25). Here you can see what actually happened from various angles.
By the way, people online complained about Argentina's goal not being invalidated after this (even though it wasn't actually a foul), yet when Lisandro Martinez actually got this foul during the Egypt match (his foot was stepped on) and Egypt's second goal, which was part of that play, got invalidated, people claimed it was a decision made to favor Argentina. But when Norway got their second goal invalidated for this exact same reason in their match against England (foul happened earlier, goal was made, and then the entire play got invalidated by that early foul and the goal got considered invalid), no one complained about how the match was "rigged" in favor of England then.
There was also this moment during the game against Switzerland in which argentine player Nico Gonzalez got both of his ankles stepped on, which should have been a yellow card, yet the referee didn't even count it as a foul, despite Gonzalez staying on the floor for like a minute while the game continued because he couldn't get up from the pain, and having trouble walking through the rest of the game (and still doing his best to run and support his team).
People complain after every game, but you don't complain during. From your point of view, the games are never rigged at any of the times the refereeing is unfair to Argentina (which has happened in every match). Now, when France got to the final in the last World Cup after having won the 2018 one, did anyone claim they had bought it? Did you guys claim FIFA was favoring them and wanted to give Mbappé another win?
As for Messi "being a zionist":
This stems from pictures of Messi in Israel in 2013, which he actually visited as part of the UNICEF Peace Tour, in which the Barcelona team went to both countries to promote peace between them 1, 2, 3
Messi has been advocating for peace between Israel and Palestine and the protection of its children for more than a decade, and even if he hadn't, that's not enough to hate an entire country (also, I don't see any of you hating on Cristiano Ronaldo, who actively and continuously supports Israel and Trump, and has rape allegations).
Especially when Argentina has recognized and supported Palestine as a free state since 2010 (which our current president is trying to take back, and the Argentine people are fighting against). Argentines (most of us at least) have always supported Palestine:
Here's an Argentine man trying to celebrate with the Israel flag and getting kicked away too
And Argentines with a giant free Palestine banner
And a bunch of articles about our support of Palestine through the years:
¿Qué podemos hacer los gazatíes? Una historia de hermanos divididos por la guerra y un acercamiento a la campaña que busca ser un llamado a
Diversas personalidades acompañaron una carta del Comité Argentino de Solidaridad con el Pueblo Palestino a la Cancillería para que se accio
Diferentes organizaciones sociales, culturales y políticas se hicieron presentes ayer en Av. de Mayo y 9 de Julio para denunciar los crí
...
Miles de personas se concentraron este viernes frente al Congreso Nacional argentino. Fue una convocatoria muy amplia, donde se hicieron pre
Este sábado 9 de agosto, decenas miles de personas en Argentina se sumaron al llamado global contra el genocidio en Gaza.
La manifestación se realizó en Buenos Aires, convocada por organizaciones defensoras de los derechos humanos, sociales y políticos.
Cobertura especial de Resumen Latinoamericano, 16 de febrero de 2024. La movilización fue organizada por el Comité Argentino de Solidaridad
Also, insane to say we're a nazi country. Peron offered refuge to both nazi and Jewish people, yes, but some of you need to stop with the double standard because so many countries did (the US literally had Operation Paperclip), and a lot of the German immigration to Argentina was unrelated to the war and happened previously (since 1870). We also have the largest Jewish community in LATAM.
We're a welcoming and loving community, we are a country made out of immigration and diversity and shared cultures. Pretending we're all 100% white and hate anything different is denying and erasing the existence of our PoC people and our roots.
There are bad people, yes, but acting like we're this conglomerate of harmful zionists is dehumanizing us and spreading hateful propaganda, we are struggling against a man who got voted under the promise of mantaining the little amout of eonomical stability we had left only to turn and try to sell our country to the US, we're actively, daily fighting for our autonomy as a country and against this man letting us be colonized again, and propagating these awful rethorics about us without knowing the truth just makes you a part of this attempt to destroy us.
And again, we're not a perfect country, awful things have happened and keep happening here, but if you're going to pay attention to all the bad, you have to pay attention to all the good too, you can't claim your opinion is fair otherwise.
You said that you know a group of people doesn't represent a country, so maybe you should look at both sides? Judging millions of people over the actions of some of them (without even knowing if said judgment is based on real information or not) is like me claiming every single person in the US is a MAGA supporter just because I've seen videos of people defending Trump.
My entire country being insulted and dehumanized over generalizations and lies leaves a bad taste in my mouth, too. Supporting colonizer countries because you don't care to actually learn the truth about us does not make you better.
no genuinely!!! they’re calling a country where numerous black tourists have said they’ve felt safe and at home racist, like ice isn’t killing numerous latinos and black people still aren’t able to pass through certain towns at night bc of how dangerous it is for them.
idk guys but no amount of (false) propaganda will convince me to not support argentina/messi. i will always support my fellow latinos and my football heroes.
if we’re bringing politics into the teams we support, i will never idealize a country that butchered my ancestors, or that colonized and destroyed many countries of the world.
spreading misinformation or using a country that commits genocide as a form of comparison to a country that is a victim of spanish colonialism will never deserve my respect.
