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HASSEN LORGAT
Bill Shankly’s famous quote is very apt about the final between Spain and Argentina, and people have taken sides—some good, bad and ugly.
Shankly’s legendary quote about football goes like this: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death… I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” This was spoken by a football manager who loved the game, which he believed was intertwined with community, passion, and his socialist ideals.
Now that the semifinals are over, a mouth-watering final between two Spanish-speaking giants of world football is set for only one winner. The other winner will be FC Barcelona, whose status hangs over the match like a halo. But beneath the spectacle of a “World Cup” or continental final lies a much bigger, more complex story—one that drags the ghosts of colonialism, the sharp contrasts of modern populism, and the ongoing battle against racism onto the world’s biggest stage.
It may seem a long time ago when Spain colonized Argentina in the 16th century, founding its first settlement in 1536. Thereafter they ruled it from various outposts, but it is clear that Spanish rule ended with the May Revolution of 1810, and Argentina declared independence on July 9, 1816. But it is the history of football rivalry and more recent politics that has wagged tongues, at least in my neck of the woods.
Photo Getty Images
Two leaders in contrast: The fascist Milei vs the socialist
At the outset, let me state that party political leaders or even presidents or prime ministers do not define the countries, but it has not stopped the debates from trying to understand the direction of a country.
Javier Milei and Pedro Sánchez could not be more different in their political outlooks and campaigning for their countries.
Argentina’s Milei
The election of Javier Milei as President of Argentina in December 2023 marked a significant and deliberate shift in the country’s foreign policy from its neutrality or openness to the Palestinian cause under the previous Peronist governments. Under this president, we have a rabidly pro-Israel and pro-United States leader who is loyal to the Trump regime and its policies. Simply put—I think he is a fascist who has recently cut public services and sought to privatise everything, particularly health and social security. Taxation is a tool he uses to bring in right-wing corporate elites like Palantir, who sees this white regime in Argentina as their home.
Before their demise, the Brenthurst Foundation wrote that President Javier Milei, “the libertarian firebrand nicknamed ‘El Loco,’ took the reins of power and introduced the ‘most radical fiscal course in Argentina’s modern history.’” They pointed out that his radical reforms—fiscal austerity and “a religious commitment to deregulation”—were introduced to rescue the country from decades of economic ruin, they said.
He is championed as the leader of the Global Right Movements, but even within his movement, he is a contradiction on many different levels.
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A friend always reminds me that despite Milei, who was only elected in December 2023, before various reincarnations of the Left, Peronists, and so on, one man does not determine the direction of a country. Critics of the Argentina Football Team must note that since his election, Argentina has changed its voting patterns in the UN to align with the United States and Israel. One today will not be surprised to find them voting differently from their earlier positions on UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, supporting a two-state solution, and ending the embargo on Cuba. Economic relations with China are under strain—taking a back seat, one commentator said—whilst relations with Brazil are strained. Human rights at the multilateral levels, where Argentina on human and gender rights were once a strong pillar of their diplomacy, is also on the wane. Like Trump, climate-related issues are avoided. In a nutshell: his government does not respect international human rights law and its mechanisms.
It is also the land—not excluding the sordid history of how Argentina, amongst other countries, dealt with the indigenous people and people of African descent. Argentina is also the land of Maradona, Che Guevara, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, and much more.
Spain’s Pedro Sánchez
In contrast to Milei, in Spain, we find a young, handsome Left-wing leader. Pedro Sánchez’s government has recognized the State of Palestine and has been vocal in its criticism of Israel’s military operations. He condemned Israel’s military offensive in Gaza as “the greatest genocide this century has witnessed,” making him one of the few European leaders to use that term.
The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), founded in 1879, has backed this stance with concrete actions, including: a permanent ban on military trade with Israel, restricting Israeli military shipments from Spanish ports and airspace, urging the EU to suspend its agreement with Israel, and imposing sanctions such as banning entry for individuals linked to human rights abuses in Gaza and prohibiting imports from Israeli settlements.
The Spanish government has officially joined South Africa’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza—and they were the first major European nation to officially declare its intention to intervene in the proceedings. This puts it alongside several other nations such as Ireland, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Libya, and so on.
Sánchez has also been more progressive on NATO, resisting demands from Trump to pay a certain percentage to defence, insisting that he would rather pay for the health and social services of working people. On immigration, Sánchez and his Socialist party have been dealing with a lot more creatively than many countries, including South Africa. They are busy, as I write, having embarked on a program of regularization (or “amnesty”) via royal decree. This will involve half a million immigrants, largely from African and other parts of the world, in particular Latin America. Those who have applied for citizenship number around 1.2 million, whom they acknowledge have paid taxes, and have revitalised dying villages in some cases, and so on.
But like home here, former prime ministers do not want to lie down and rest. (South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma and uMkhonto weSizwe (MKP) have moved to officially recognise Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara and support the Moroccan autonomy plan. This stance is a major shift from the long-standing official South African government policy, which supports the Polisario Front and Sahrawi independence. By doing so, they broke with the long-held position of the OAU and now the African Union. In addition, the MKP, his party, has openly allied with xenophobic political mobilisations against fellow Africans that have resulted in loss of life, injuries, and mass relocations or deportations of these people.)
In contrast, Sánchez has not chosen to see migrants as vermin or scum, as some have done here, and he was prepared to put his mouth and policies out there. For instance, he has had to face former prime minister Mariano Rajoy, who governed Spain between 2011 and 2018 as leader of the conservative People’s Party. He touched on a nerve, still fresh in Europe and now politicised worldwide by global right-wing agendas. Rajoy wrote on the El Debate news site about the French team before the semi-final, saying that they are a “very high-level squad. Of course, without Frenchmen,” in reference to the African heritage of some of the players.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez jumped in and defended the human rights agenda against his predecessor. He wrote on social media thus: “There are those who still measure belonging by surname, place of birth, or skin color. Spain belongs to those who love it and work for it. Not to those who shame it with xenophobic comments. France, we will see you in the semi-final. May the best team win and may racism lose.”
In addition, two 19-year-old footballers, Pau Cubarsí and Lamine Yamal, pointed out their ideas of inclusion. Cubarsí advocated for equality and genuine integration, writing: “If they play for the French national team, then at the end of the day they are French… Their skin colour does not matter.” Yamal referred to those players of France as role models and argued for respect: “If football has a purpose, it is to unite society, and there is no better example [of that] than us and France.”
Photo Nacho Doce
Messi and his two or more sons
This match revolves around Lionel Messi and his legacy in Spanish football and now world football. King Leo was named Lionel by his mum, Celia Cuccittini, who was a big fan of Lionel Richie, and so, why not? She decided to name her son after him.
Messi is a Barça legend, and the two young players, Yamal and Cubarsí, are now playing for FCB and for Spain against the man they admired. Messi met them before they knew that it was Messi.
In an earlier piece, I wrote how Messi’s early advocacy around UNICEF was downplayed in Spain and elsewhere, but the irrepressible small genius has reappeared in the news through photos with the two outspoken young players.
Messi was twenty years old when he met the infant Yamal during a promotional charity photo shoot in Barcelona. It was late in 2007, when Diario Sport teamed up with the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, in a charity raffle organised by the newspaper. Lamine Yamal’s family earned a spot in a promotional photo shoot with a young Lionel Messi. The raffle was winning the opportunity to take part in a promotional calendar photo shoot with Barça players. The family of Lamine Yamal, who was only six months old at the time, won one of the raffle slots, and the photo session took place in the Camp Nou stadium dressing room.
It was fate that the raffle brought the two together. The now-famous photo shows Messi holding Yamal in a blue plastic baby bathtub. The images were archived after publication in the 2008 charity calendar, but it took some 18 years for them to reappear during the 2024 Euros, when Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, found it and shared it, writing: “The beginning of two legends.”
It is true that Joan Garcia, Cubarsí, and others met Messi in La Masia or in the FC Barcelona family as he was growing to become the best player in the club. There are many fabricated photos of actual incidents of these, but what is undeniable is that both Messi and the two 19-year-olds will meet each other on the pitch.
It is almost twenty years after that historic photo shoot with the legend, but one thing is clear: the two young players will be in awe and do their best, but they have already won by speaking out in favour of fellow players when they were attacked by racist Spaniards.
If Spain wins, they will be doing it after sixteen years, and if Argentina wins, it will be back-to-back victories for them. Nada más. Nothing more. Enough said. Let the beautiful game not be marred by dirty stuff on and off the field.
