‘Rifts began to appear’: Why many Latin Americans want Spain to beat Argentina in the World Cup final

Argentina fans have travelled well as usual for the 2026 World Cup. Photograph: Rob Newell/CameraSport/Getty Images The Brazilian journalist and columnist Julia Duailibi usually writes about politics in her weekly column for the leading Brazilian newspaper O Globo, but last Thursday she took a different tack, writing instead about why she would not be supporting neighbouring Argentina in the World Cup final. “I have always been an admirer of the hermanos [as Brazilians affectionately call Argentinians] and would have loved to cheer on a fellow South American team,” she wrote on the morning after Argentina’s dramatic semi-final victory over England. “But I admit that the racist scenes involving a minority of the fans, and the silence of the majority on the pitch, turned my stomach.” Related: VAR ‘fixes’, AI slop and perpetual outrage: the World Cup in the age of conspiracy | Karim Zidan Her stand is just one example of a common sentiment: across Latin America, many people have declared their support for Spain in Sunday’s final. Racism by some Argentinian fans has been cited as one reason, but not the only one. “In the past, people were more likely to support a Latin American team against a European one, but that has changed quite a lot in recent years,” said Nicolás Cabrera, an Argentinian sociologist and anthropologist who has devoted his academic career to studying football supporters across Latin America. Previously, he said, that approach had largely been confined to Argentina’s traditional local rivals – above all Brazil, but also Uruguay and Chile – but has more recently extended to some Mexicans, Colombians and Ecuadorians. “Rifts began to appear for several reasons,” said Cabrera, who has lived in Rio de Janeiro for the past 10 years, where he is a university lecturer and researcher. First, there is the fact that Argentina have by far been Latin America’s most successful national team in recent years, reaching three of the past four World Cup finals and winning at least one of them. Over the same period, their neighbours have suffered much earlier exits This includes Brazil, who have not reached the World Cup final since winning their record fifth title in 2002. Related: Argentina’s ‘European’ self-image under renewed scrutiny after racist incidents in Brazil Argentina also have the star who has been lifting trophies and winning hearts around the world for two decades: Lionel Messi , who, even at 39, has been one of this World Cup’s standout players. Cabrera also sees the growing rivalry as a consequence of the increasing number of matches between clubs – the Copa Libertadores continental tournament featured about 20 teams until the 1990s; today, including the preliminary rounds, nearly 50 compete. “As our teams play each other more often, fans start winding each other up,” he said. But Cabrera added that social media have also contributed: “Hate speech, racism, xenophobia and discrimination began to circulate in ways that had previously been more marginal and less visible.” It is difficult for there to be a match between clubs from Argentina and Brazil without at least one video emerging of an Argentina supporter making monkey gestures at Brazilians. But this is far from new: in 1920, on the eve of a friendly between the two sides, an Argentinian newspaper published a cartoon depicting the Brazilian players as monkeys. In recent months, several tourists from Argentina have been arrested in Brazil for “racial insult”, a crime under Brazilian law. While celebrating his country’s victory over England, an Argentinian tourist was filmed in the Brazilian north-eastern state of Bahia making monkey gestures at a Black Brazilian. He was not arrested and has reportedly already returned to Argentina. What had previously been confined to the streets and the stands at Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana matches spilled over into the World Cup – including the incidents involving US influencer IShowSpeed in Argentina’s game against Cape Verde. That was what prompted Duailibi to take a break from politics to write about Argentina. “I know Brazil is not a model in this respect either, that we still have a long way to go when it comes to racism, but at least our legal framework is far more effective than theirs,” she said. Argentina has no law that explicitly criminalises racism. The controversies are not confined to Brazil or the terraces. While celebrating their 2024 Copa América title, Argentina players chanted racist and homophobic songs about members of the France squad they had defeated in the 2022 World Cup final. During the current World Cup, a well-known Argentinian journalist said on a television programme that he hated Mexicans “with all his soul”. Days earlier, he had also claimed that, during a match between Mexico and Ecuador, the Ecuadorians played in fear after supposedly being “threatened with death” by a Mexican drug cartel. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, described the remarks as “outrageous”. While condemning the racist incidents involving some Argentinians, Fábio Luís Barbosa dos Santos, a Brazilian historian specialising in Latin America, said that they will not stop him from supporting the neighbouring country in the final. “If the issue is racism, then you couldn’t support Spain either,” he said, recalling not only Spain’s colonial past, during which it profited from the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, but also the countless recent cases of racist abuse directed at the Brazilian footballer Vinícius Júnior by La Liga supporters in his appearances for Real Madrid. Santos said he would be supporting Argentina “because we are countries bound together by our colonial past, by dictatorships and now by the far right”, noting that while Argentina has President Javier Milei, Brazil until recently had Jair Bolsonaro in the equivalent position. “Their misfortunes are ours too, as their joys should be,” he added. He is far from the only Brazilian supporting Argentina in the final. The ride-hailing driver João Felipe Jr, 32, will travel 270 miles from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo to watch the match at a bar founded by Argentinians that went viral for welcoming dozens of Brazilians who have also chosen to support the neighbouring country. “There was a Brazil v Argentina match at the Maracanã three years ago that I attended with the Argentina supporters,” said Felipe Jr, who dismissed as “nonsense” the flood of memes and conspiracy theories on social media claiming that Argentina had been favoured by Fifa. “They deserve to be in the final, above all because of what Messi is doing. For me, it has everything to do with him. When he retires, I’ll stop supporting Argentina,” he said.