Spain-Argentina Game Thread

“Los argentinos son mas arrogantes que los chilenos” was a correct answer in my Spanish class in Santiago on Friday. Everyone in Latin America hates Argentina. In fact, most everyone hates Argentina period. I was in Colombia once, in a van taking people people from Cartagena to Barranquilla. The van driver passed one of the drivers from the same company, broken down. He pulled over to help and see if he could take a couple of the passengers. A couple of the passengers in that van were just screaming at the poor driver. When our driver came back, someone asked about it. He was like, they were from Argentina. The entire van started ranting about how much they hated everyone from Argentina. I was in Bolivia once, staying at a guesthouse where my friend was dating the owner. She told us how much she hated the Argentines because they were so demanding and unthankful. Yesterday, my wife told me of a friend of ours in Mexico who studied in Buenos Aires for a little while. They were talking over a delicious tlayuda and she told my wife how horrible the Argentines were to her and the other students from indigenous parts of Latin America in that program.

These stories repeat themselves over and over. So of course, the fucking Argentines had to have yet another improbable late comeback and defeat the English to make the final. And then after that match, what did the players do? Oh yeah, they went full nationalist to make their claims on the Falklands, or, excuse me, the “Malvinas” with a big sign displayed on the field (I’d show it here, but we’d probably get sued like we do for every other image we use that’s not on Wikipedia). Give me a break. In the comments to the England-Argentina game (or “match” as they say), there were commenters stating that they were surprised I’d defend the English, of all people. But if you look at the actual history of the islands instead of just an inherent reflexive anti-English position, you see that the entire position of Argentina is preposterous. Sure, there’s no reason for England to hold them, but there’s also no reason for Argentina to hold them and, notably, no one who lives in Falklands wants anything to do with Argentina. Granted, I understand being reflexively anti-English; my Irish-American very much holds this and wants the English out of the Falklands for the same reason, but she also knows there’s no reason for the Argentines to be there either. So if you want to say Fuck England, that’s fine, but really, I don’t know what those Italians with Spanish last names have done to deserve your anti-colonial sympathies.

Well, in any case, there’s surely no reason to root for Argentina here. In fact, maybe the Spanish need to retake the entire Rio de la Plata here. Argentina does nothing better than Spain and you can’t even use the anti-colonial argument here given Argentina’s rather, uh, robust history of genocide, its deeply held racism toward the rest of Latin America, and its tremendous arrogance from the perspective of every other country in the region. Plus, whereas Argentina’s political leaders are as Trumpy as possible (Millei’s VP is a full-fledged fascist lunatic, even more evil than he is), Spain’s leader has taken the lead in Europe in telling Trump to fuck off.

So why not root for España here?