EL PAÍS

Argentina seeks to defy the champion’s curse at the World Cup

Andrés Burgo — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:12:05 +0000

In the early 1960s, at the World Cup — and in soccer in general — yellow and red cards did not exist. Substitutions were not allowed either. The winning team earned two points. World Cup matches were played entirely during the day, without floodlights. If a playoff tie ended level, there were no penalty shootouts: a replay was held 48 hours later.

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Argentine soccer’s credibility battered by suspicions of corruption, biased refereeing, and controversial trophy awards

Andrés Burgo — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 10:27:21 +0000

Argentine football could well also be declared a world champion of holding the most scandalous and incomprehensible tournaments. While Lionel Messi’s national team was crowned world champion at the Qatar 2022 World Cup and won back-to-back Copa América titles at Brazil 2021 and in the United States in 2024, the Argentine domestic leagues have sunk to a subterranean level, below the threshold of credibility. The Argentine Football Association (AFA) has created a two-headed figure that, symbolically, is beginning to tarnish the heroes of Qatar: street murals honoring the world champions have been vandalized by fans of various clubs, angered by the deluge of questionable refereeing decisions and sudden rule changes that are eroding the daily life of the tournaments, an emotional refuge for millions of Argentinians.

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Javier Milei’s chainsaw cuts deep into Argentine sports

Andrés Burgo — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 18:01:33 +0000

River and Boca tied on Sunday at the peak of the most passionate weekend in Argentine soccer, the so-called “classics day,” a day that includes local derby matches, such as Independiente vs. Racing, and Newell’s vs. Central. However, behind the crowds and the power cultivated by the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 championship, the grassroots of Argentine sport are reeling from being dismantled by President Javier Milei’s government.

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A year after World Cup triumph in Qatar, Argentina commemorates the largest collective party in its history

Andrés Burgo — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 12:32:40 +0000

Today’s Argentina — with more than 40% of its population living below the poverty line, annual inflation that will exceed 170% this year and with the recently inaugurated presidency of the ultra-right-wing Javier Milei — has greater needs and urgencies than resorting to nostalgia. But there is an exception: an anniversary involving a reminder of the country’s happiest day in recent decades. On Monday, a soccer-mad nation celebrated one year since the Qatar 2022 World Cup final — the sports channels broadcast the match against France, when the Albiceleste won its third World Cup, and the players, led by Lionel Messi, wrote evocative posts on their social media accounts — but Wednesday’s commemoration will mark the first anniversary of an even more extraordinary event.

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Messi, Di María, Mascherano, Menotti, Bielsa: why Rosario is the capital of Argentinean soccer

Andrés Burgo — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 14:38:06 +0000

There are regions of the world that, either due to their geography, microclimate, diet, physical biotype, sports culture or labor traditions, are specialists in producing champions. Sometimes this formation is natural: the Rift Valley in East Africa is the homeland of the world’s best marathon runners. At other times it seems to be a statistical challenge: Spain’s smallest province, Guipúzcoa, will provide four of the English Premier League’s 20 managers next season. And in Argentina, the Qatar 2022 World Cup has revived the soccer phenomenon in Rosario, the so-called cradle of the national flag — it was raised there for the first time in 1812 — which is also considered a mecca for footballers and coaches: a Shangri-La of the beautiful game.

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World Cup trophy Leo Messi paraded in Qatar revealed to be a fake

Andrés Burgo — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 14:12:15 +0000

The most-liked photograph in the history of Instagram is, it has been revealed, a bit of a mix-up. When Leo Messi hoisted the World Cup trophy aloft in front of Argentina fans massed inside Qatar’s Lusail Stadium on December 18, the image garnered over 74 million thumbs-up on the Paris Saint-Germain forward’s personal account. However, it was not the genuine World Cup trophy. It was in fact a handmade replica that a couple of Argentina fans from Buenos Aires had crafted and taken to Qatar as a talisman and a sort of souvenir.

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Leo Messi close to agreeing new two-year deal with PSG

Andrés Burgo — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 10:37:18 +0000

Having secured his career dream of delivering a World Cup to Argentina 36 years after Diego Maradona led the Albiceleste to glory in Mexico, Leo Messi has begun to turn his attention to the next challenge after scaling soccer’s Everest. Meanwhile, Argentineans have started to fear that making good on his status as one of the greatest – many argue the greatest – players of all time may have taken the oxygen out of Messi’s continued ambition. “Let’s hope the French don’t do to Leo what the Italians did to Diego,” is a common refrain. Maradona, one of two or three players alongside Messi in the all-time debate, did not last long in Serie A after the 1990 World Cup, where he scored the winning penalty in a semi-final shootout against host nation Italy after an ill-tempered encounter: he played his final game for Napoli in March 1991. However, that does not appear to be Messi’s fate, despite his brilliant display in the final in Qatar to extinguish the best efforts of France’s star forward and his PSG teammate, Kylian Mbappé.

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