Argentina was having enough of a rough week after watching their national team’s decisive defeat in the World Cup final and tears from Lionel Messi. Then came what felt like an enormous, persistent wave of global hatred against their nation.
Fans of opposing teams, celebrities of all kinds and a surge of social media users were directing their scorn not only at the Argentine team but at the country as a whole — turning the celebrated champions of the 2022 World Cup into the villains of 2026.
“We lost, and now we’re being called every name under the sun,” said Mercedes Maspero, an Argentine researcher.
In part, the animosity was fueled by speculation that Argentina had received favorable treatment from soccer’s global governing body, FIFA, and by the team’s sometimes aggressive style of play.
Then there was the post-match brawl after Sunday’s final, in which several Argentine players and staff attacked Spanish opponents.
The criticism was also linked to off-field behavior during the tournament, including Argentine players captured on video singing a racist chant about French players in 2024, an incident that critics resurfaced this year. An Argentine fan also apparently directed racist abuse at IShowSpeed, a Black streamer and social media influencer.
But the anti-Argentine sentiment came to be framed around a wider critique of Argentine society, history, and the country as a whole.
Samuel L. Jackson, the actor, reposted an Instagram story urging Black fans not to support Argentina for historically being “one of, if not the most racist country in the world.”
The American comedian Eric André celebrated Argentina’s loss against Spain in an expletive-laden Instagram story in which he accused Argentina of being racist, violent and full of crime.
Mr. André, in a statement, said that he “was referring to the history of their government’s policies, not every single citizen.” A representative for Mr. Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.
Some celebrities, like the singers Patti Smith and Rosalía, reposted (and later apologized for sharing) content that was interpreted as being critical of Argentina, and the connection between racism and anti-Argentine support even reached a hearing at the U.S. Congress.
Many motivated their opposition with accusations that the Argentine national team does not have any Black players, and online petitions to exclude Argentina from the World Cup attracted large numbers of signatures.
The denunciations of Argentina started weeks before the final, but Argentines seemed too busy living the dream of a consecutive World Cup title to pay much attention. Immediately after their loss in the final, they were overwhelmed with sadness. But this week, the lament that washed over Argentines has given way to indignation, confusion and anger over the global hatred directed at them.
Even President Javier Milei responded. “They are jealous of us,” he posted on Instagram. “We are good at almost everything.”
Some commentators tried to address the substance of the condemnations.
“The World Cup enabled some sort of international court in which Argentina is the accused,” said Pedro Rosemblat, a prominent Argentine journalist, on his streaming show.
Judgment was coming from people in the United States, he said, which has a long history of racism, or European nations that had started wars, engaged in colonization and still wrestle with xenophobia.
And verdicts were rendered, Mr. Rosemblat added, by actors and celebrities “who would not be able to explain anything about our history, our society and our civilization.”
Many Argentines condemned the racist chants of players and fans and the team’s physical attacks on their opponents. They admitted that their country, like many others, has problems with racism. But they rejected that problematic aspects of their history should prompt a sweeping stigmatization of their nation and team.
“Argentina has its share of racism, but no more than any other Latin American country,” an antiracism group made up of Argentines of Indigenous origins called “Identidad Marrón,’’ or “Brown Identity,” wrote in an Instagram post.
Daniel Schteingart, an Argentine researcher, pointed out on social media that the Integrated Values Survey, a study and survey that measures values in dozens of countries, found that 4 percent of Argentines said they would not like having an immigrant as a neighbor, and less than 3 percent would object to a neighbor of a different race.
Those figures, from the most recent study conducted between 2017 and 2022, were among the lowest in the world and lower than those in the United States, France, Spain or Mexico.
“It makes sense: Argentina has opened its doors to immigration since the 19th century and has one of the friendliest immigration laws on the planet,” Mr. Schteingart wrote.
Argentina has historically provided immigrants with broad access to public education and health care while offering accessible pathways to legal residency. And even though the Milei government has imposed some restrictions, Argentina’s immigration policy is still far less strict than that of the United States under President Trump.
“Pointing out real problems is one thing; turning an entire country into a caricature is another,” Mr. Schteingart wrote.
Racist incidents have been a dark fixture of European soccer for decades, though recent years have brought far stricter penalties as players started to speak out demanding action. Argentina, by contrast, has not yet undergone a similar reckoning, as casual slurs and racial innuendos continue to be used.
The criticism arising from the World Cup has also led to a broader look at race relations in Argentina and its treatment of Indigenous and Black people.
Black people once made up a much larger share of the population across the region that became Argentina.
There were many reasons for that decline. Black men were repeatedly and disproportionately mobilized for wars, while poor living conditions contributed to high infant mortality and lower birth rates. Intermarriage changed how many descendants were classified in official records, and mass European immigration sharply reduced the Black community’s relative size.
This helped cement an enduring image of Argentina as a white, European nation, one that minimized and left out its African roots and the contributions of Afro-Argentines from its official history.
Organizations like Identidad Marrón have said that Argentina actually has a much more diverse ethnic mix.
That includes many people of Indigenous descent, among them Argentina’s soccer demigod Diego Maradona, who spoke proudly of his native Guaraní roots.
Groups like Identidad Marrón have long said that Argentina’s nonwhite population is often the target of discrimination, but they condemned what he called an oversimplified debate.
“If it was so easy, it would mean that national teams with more players of African descent belong to nations that respect their rights,” said Alejandro Mamani, an Argentine lawyer of Indigenous descent who is part of the group. “And that at their borders, in their seas, there would not be bodies and dinghies adrift.”
Lucía Cholakian Herrera and Natalie Alcoba contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.
