Qatar World Cup 2022

The Dutch can be rough but Argentina definitely kicked things off on the night last week and the Argies are more deliberately nasty than rough.

Of course it was the most compelling match from the last ten minutes onwards.

Their celebration into the Dutch faces was utterly classless and makes the silly little Brazilian dance that so many seemed to be exorcised about seem like kindergarten stuff in comparison.

The Argies definitely have no problem consistently mixing cheating tactics into the equation also over many years also - which I don't really like.

The Dutch would certainly be nowhere near their level on that aspect.

No surprise that 60% of Argentinians have Italian heritage.

I'm hoping for a French win on Sunday and as Argentina (and Messi) in the Messi era have tended to very much underperform in finals - both in the Copa finals and in the World Cup I think that is more likely as an outcome.

Mbappe is unlikely to tear up the Argies as much as he did in 2018 where he bagged two goals and a penalty (converted by Griezmann) but maybe we will see a run like the previous time where there was a full posse of hapless Argies scuttling along in his wake where they resorted eventually to cutting him down in the box. That was the image of the 2018 World Cup for me.

If you've ever been to South America you'd know that they aren't very popular there in other South American countries

and

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/upshot/why-so-many-world-cup-fans-dislike-argentina.html

They was a heavy dynamic of sort of regional racial and economic superiority going on in the past (even though the place has been an economic shambles since the turn of the century and has been very much surpassed by the likes of for example, Chile)

As it says in that NY Times article

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“For many years, Argentina’s economy was the strongest in the region, and there was a strong European influence; that built an image of superiority,” said Leandro Morgenfeld, a historian at the University of Buenos Aires. “The sectors of society that regional neighbors most came into contact with were those projecting that arrogance.”

Historians of soccer and politics in Latin America attribute some of the animosity to the ways in which some Argentines have traditionally viewed their nation, which received millions of European immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries: as a dominion of racial pre-eminence in the region.

In the realm of sports, before Brazil surged to the elite ranks of global soccer in the second half of the 20th century, dark-skinned Brazilian players faced racial abuse in Argentina. In the 1920s, the Brazilian writer Lima Barreto described how Brazilian players were called “macaquitos” (little monkeys) in Buenos Aires.