It’s a football field, not a garden party – passions run high, the language is spicy, the chants often vulgar. But usually everybody involved knows where the line is, what is appropriate, even if near the knuckle, and what is simply not OK. So this is surely the least controversial of all the hot takes flying around about last night’s match: Argentina’s players dragging a political statement into the World Cup is outrageous and unforgivable.
Yes, politics has intruded on this World Cup already, thanks to Donald Trump and his administration. But this was different, because this was from the players themselves. Technically, they broke the rules, but even worse than that, morally, ethically, they showed themselves to be thoroughly bad sports. This is not what football is about. They have polluted the spirit of the game and all it stands for. They might have won the match, but they have lost in ways far more important, profound and far-reaching.
That the Argentine team pulled such a tasteless move just after breaking our nation’s hearts only adds insult to injury. They scored the dramatic deciding goal in the 92nd minute, meaning England were out of the tournament and would have been fully aware of the national devastation this would cause. Any notion of being dignified winners, noble in triumph, went out the window as they shamefully seized this moment to rub salt into our raw wounds. These opportunists celebrated by holding up a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”, which translates as “The Falklands are Argentine”.
