Rioplatense football’s death drive

The clues had been there all along, though few were paying enough attention. That Argentina could lose – and in such self-immolating fashion – had already been foretold by its River Plate neighbour in the last of Spain’s group matches. Against Uruguay, the Spanish had had to contend with what Freud might have termed a rioplatense ‘death drive’: that aggressive and destructive outward manifestation that invariably ends in self-sabotage. With Agustín Canobbio’s red card, for a high challenge on the Catalan Pau Cubarsí (remember the name), Uruguay’s exit from the World Cup was all but secured. Unchastened, Canobbio manhandled the Moroccan referee only to be held back by his teammates. The ensuing mêlée, as is usual in such matters, was continued on the touchlines.

Where Uruguay went, Argentina duly followed. Messi’s eight goals, exquisite touch and saintly patience only served to temper a team ready to implode. By the final, the Argentines had eschewed aesthetics for anti-fútbol, the uncompromising gamesmanship that the country had developed in the 1960s to great success. Though here the results were abject: no shots on target in regular time, and the talismanic Messi a distracted genius walking the field. There was an inevitability in Enzo Fernández’s second yellow card – for a foolish challenge on Cubarsí – and sending off. Spain’s goal that followed shortly thereafter offered the Europeans – and their worldwide supporters – a form of divine justice: the order of the footballing universe had been restored.

Much has been made of the post-match descent into chaos – the Argentines, through their midfielder Leandro Paredes, took the fight to the celebrating Spaniards – though anyone acquainted with the Latin-American game has an easy familiarity with such scenes. Following his country’s defeat, Fernández sought to assuage his guilt through a very Argentine formulation of the grandiose mixed with self-delusion: ‘Competing isn’t just about winning; it’s about giving your all for the jersey and never giving up.’ He felt the team had ‘defended these colours with pride, humility, and commitment’, though he should have heeded Jacques Vaché’s maxim: ‘Nothing kills a man as much as having to represent his country.’

The opprobrium heaped upon the Argentines was not unwarranted, though its vigour did surprise. (English commentators have ‘high-handed’ form where South American misdemeanour is concerned, conveniently forgetting the ‘physicality’ of their own domestic game.) The universal antipathy, even among fellow Latin Americans, was a response to the country’s greatest flaw (but conversely its greatest asset): arrogance. As early as 1933, the writer Ezequiel Martínez Estrada diagnosed this weakness: ‘Vastness is not greatness: it is merely the idea of greatness.’ Forty years later, while researching what would become a censorious essay on Argentina, V.S. Naipaul jotted in his notebook: ‘Un prejuicio racial integral contra todos [A built-in racial prejudice against everyone]… Dios es argentino [God is Argentine].’ The celebration, after England’s defeat, with a white bedsheet that carried the legend, ‘Las Malvinas son Argentinas’ [The Falklands are Argentine] did little to dispel these charges. Nor did the Argentine broadcaster Eduardo Feinmann in his assessment of Mexico after England’s rearguard victory: ‘I loathe Mexicans…the envy Mexicans have for Argentines – not just in football – they want to be like us, but they just can’t cut it.’ For this nation of individuals, where the state can be an abstraction, the usual rules do not apply.

The country’s image (historically always on the verge of being tarnished) was not improved by its relationship with FIFA. The game’s self-regulatory body was thought by many to have been too indulgent of the reigning World Champions. Those adjudicating Argentina’s matches were now accused of facilitating Messi’s passage through the competition. The Egyptian manager Hossam Hassan was unequivocal in his assessment after his country’s narrow 3-2 defeat, using the language of conspiracy usually reserved for Latin Americans. The boot was now on the other foot.

Conspiracy theories have long been a fundamental part of the Latin American game, unleashed even before the referee’s final whistle. Interviewed years after the 1966 World Cup, the Argentine captain Antonio Rattín recalled acerbically: ‘And just by chance the referee for our game against England was a German, who sent me off. The referee for the Uruguay versus Germany match was an Englishman… Everything was set up.’ The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński was accurate when he observed, ‘Latins are obsessed with spies, intelligence conspiracies and plots.’

Across the River Plate, Uruguay has had to contend with intrigues of its own. The diminutive republic, with its aristocratic pedigree of two early World Cups, failed to make the tournament’s Round of 32, even though there were eight berths for third-placed teams. That the quixotic Argentine Marcelo Bielsa was chosen to manage a country known for its belligerence was as short-sighted as it was erroneous. Victories in qualification against Argentina and Brazil had only flattered to deceive. At least he was nothing if not honest. ‘I leave nothing to Uruguayan football,’ the parting words of a manager, who before the tournament offered up the self-diagnosis, ‘I am toxic.’ The weight of expectation of having won 76 years ago – the delusional belief that the trophy may be within touching distance is a similarity shared with England – has suffocated its football.

Paraguay, seeking to emulate its regional neighbours in whose shadow it has always languished, employed its dark arts of brutal containment to better effect against France. The ploy worked – the paucity of yellow cards a testament to its effectiveness and myopic refereeing – before Kylian Mbappé’s penalty closed out the game.

Brazil’s mediocre campaign was blamed on the interdenominational movement and the growth of Protestantism within the country. After Endrick’s costly miss in Brazil’s defeat to Norway, there was a sense of divine decree in the player’s response: ‘I even kept talking to God.’ The tone did not sit well with certain Brazilian commentators who perceived this as the ascendancy of ‘evangelical guilt’ over its Catholic variant, and an outsourcing of footballing responsibility to a higher power.

For the Catalan Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, football was ‘a religion in search of a god’. The poignant image of Lionel Messi after the final, sitting on his own, proved that he was human after all. Like the mercurial Diego Maradona, he epitomises a sense of argentinidad (Argentine-ness) that many Argentines find difficult to articulate. Yet, in those moments, this strange, lonely genius, set apart from his confrontational teammates, offered up something more Borgesian in tone: the liberation of the universal from the strictures of the parochial. Borges, who saw Argentine-ness as ‘an act of faith’, believed ‘our patrimony is the universe; we should essay all themes’. And in footballing terms, Messi’s career may have done just that.