Art & Culture

Why Has Argentina Become Football’s Universal Villain?

BYKhaoula Ghanem

July 16, 2026

Argentina have become football’s universal villain this World Cup. Every match seems to produce the same phenomenon. Fans from every corner of the world suddenly unite behind whoever happens to be playing Argentina. England? Spain? It doesn’t even matter actually. For many, defeating Argentina has become more important than who actually wins.

The irony, of course, is impossible to ignore. Across the Global South, plenty of supporters who spend the rest of the year criticizing colonialism have found themselves cheering for former colonial powers simply because the alternative is Argentina. Watching Arabs, Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans collectively rooting for England, and now Spain, feels almost absurd until you remember that Argentina has spent much of its history trying to distinguish itself from the rest of South America.

The country’s national identity was built around the idea that Argentina was more European and more “white” than its neighbors, a mythology that came at the expense of Afro-Argentine and Indigenous communities whose presence was deliberately minimized or removed from the national story. The disappearance was not accidental or simply the natural result of migration, but part of a broader process that Argentine governments explicitly described as blanqueamiento, or whitening.

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, successive governments encouraged mass European immigration while presenting Europe as the model Argentina should follow. Political thinkers such as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento framed the country’s development as a struggle between “civilization” and “barbarism,” with European culture representing modernity while Indigenous communities were treated as obstacles standing in the way of progress.

Over time, Argentina successfully constructed an image of itself as the European nation of South America, while Buenos Aires was repeatedly described as the continent’s answer to Paris. The idea that Argentina was fundamentally different from the rest of Latin America became one of the country’s most persistent national myths, and it continues to shape how many of its neighbors see it today.

That mindset still shows up today. In 2021, the country’s then-president Alberto Fernández caused outrage after declaring that “Mexicans came from Indigenous people, Brazilians came from the jungle, and Argentines came from ships from Europe.” Fernández claimed that he was quoting Mexican writer Octavio Paz. The line actually came from a 1982 Argentine rock song. Either way, the remark exposed a hierarchy that many Latin Americans had already recognized for generations.

Within the continent, Argentina’s reputation for arrogance and exceptionalism has become something of a running joke. During this World Cup, supporters have repeatedly shared the phrase “América Latina menos Argentina,” meaning Latin America without Argentina, as the dislike surrounding the team has spread far beyond the usual rivalries with Brazil, Uruguay, or Chile.

Successful football teams have always attracted resentment, especially when they dominate tournaments or arrive with enormous expectations. Brazil have spent decades shifting between beloved entertainers and unbearable favorites, while England are regularly booed before they have even given anyone a fresh reason. France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Italy have all spent periods as the team neutrals desperately wanted eliminated. Even Morocco became a victim of hate-watching this World Cup.

Argentina’s case feels different though because the resentment comes from several directions at once. Some supporters dislike the country’s racial history and sense of regional superiority, while others simply cannot stand the team’s behavior on the pitch. Emiliano Martínez has built much of his public persona around winding up opposition players and mocking rival supporters. Rodrigo De Paul has become equally divisive through his gamesmanship, confrontations, and willingness to disrupt the rhythm of any match whenever Argentina need control. Even many Argentine supporters would probably admit that this team enjoys being disliked, especially when hostility appears to make them more competitive.

Other viewers are less interested in the players’ behavior and more suspicious of the institutions surrounding them. The idea that FIFA, broadcasters, sponsors, and referees want Lionel Messi to remain in the tournament has followed Argentina—nicknamed “VARgentina” by many— through every stage, with each controversial decision treated as further evidence that the ending has already been written.

Those suspicions intensified after Argentina’s dramatic victory over Egypt. Trailing 2-0 in Atlanta, Argentina were handed a lifeline when VAR rewound play nearly ten seconds and roughly three quarters of the pitch to disallow Mostafa Zico’s goal for an earlier foul. Lionel Messi equalized minutes later, before Argentina completed their comeback and sent Egypt home.

Egypt coach Hossam Hassan described the decision as an injustice and openly questioned whether FIFA simply wanted Messi to remain in the competition. The Egyptian Football Association later filed a formal protest, while several former World Cup referees argued that the intervention stretched VAR beyond the purpose for which the technology was introduced.

Whether every criticism of that decision was technically correct became almost secondary once the final whistle blew. Football supporters rarely judge controversial calls in isolation, especially when decades of frustration already shape how they understand power within the game. Every disputed decision arrives carrying older suspicions about which teams receive patience, protection, and the benefit of doubt, and which teams are expected to accept their elimination without complaint.

The politics surrounding Argentina made the Egypt controversy even more combustible. Argentine president Javier Milei has become one of Israel’s most outspoken international supporters, repeatedly praising the Israeli government while pledging to relocate Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem. During the tournament, a clip circulated showing an Israeli minister asking Milei to “bring the fourth World Cup to Argentina,” while Benjamin Netanyahu nodded beside him.

There is no evidence that political relationships influenced the refereeing, and FIFA has denied any suggestion of deliberate bias. However, football has never existed inside a political vacuum, especially for supporters watching from countries where the war in Gaza remains deeply personal. When the coach who repeatedly spoke in support of Palestine was eliminated after a disputed VAR intervention, while a team publicly endorsed by Netanyahu advanced, many viewers drew their own conclusions.

Those conclusions may not be provable, but they reveal how little trust many supporters have left in football’s governing institutions. Fans have watched FIFA stage tournaments alongside authoritarian governments, expand competitions beyond recognition, and repeatedly insist that politics has no place in football while embracing political leaders whenever the relationship proves commercially useful. Against that background, asking people to separate sport from politics begins to sound less like neutrality and more like selective amnesia.

Perhaps the biggest shift, however, concerns Lionel Messi himself. For most of his career, Messi occupied a rare position in football as a globally adored superstar who remained largely untouched by the hostility aimed at other dominant players. He was seen as quiet, humble, and uninterested in celebrity, which allowed supporters to admire him even while watching him destroy their teams.

Much of that affection still exists, and many people cheering against Argentina would probably struggle to claim that they genuinely dislike Messi. What they increasingly reject is the mythology that now surrounds him, including the sense that the entire sport has become invested in delivering one final fairytale before he retires.

For fans from countries that rarely receive the same attention, the framing can become exhausting. Egypt’s players were not simply trying to reach a World Cup quarterfinal, because they were also expected to provide another dramatic obstacle in Messi’s path toward immortality.

That narrative becomes especially frustrating whenever Argentina benefit from a contested decision. Supporters who already believe football protects its biggest stars do not see an isolated refereeing mistake, because they see confirmation that Messi’s story matters more than everybody else’s. The stronger the insistence that Argentina’s success represents a beautiful final chapter, the more people seem determined to ruin the ending.

Ultimately, Argentina sits at the intersection of history, race, politics, football, and internet culture, with each controversy feeding into the next. Every fan brings their own reason for wanting Argentina to lose, yet somehow they all arrive at the same conclusion whether they’re England supporters, Arab, Latin American, African, or Brazilian. They may disagree on everything else, yet for ninety minutes they all seem to agree on the same thing: Anyone but Argentina.

Why Has Argentina Become Football’s Universal Villain?

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Why Has Argentina Become Football’s Universal Villain?

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