Buenos Aires, Argentina — Argentines take to the streets to have fun his Copa América triumph on Sunday night, inhabit a very different place now than 19 months ago, when World Cup victory sent millions entering the same square in Buenos Aires in a howl of collective celebration.
“Glorious”, recalled Diego Cáceres, 38, about Argentina’s biggest outdoor party on December 18, 2022.
“This is also beautiful,” he said of Sunday’s crowd cheering and setting off fireworks around the capital’s obelisk after Argentina beat Colombia 1-0 in extra time to win their third major tournament in a row. “But it’s an icing on the cake, or a reminder. It makes me want to go back in time.”
The economic crisis has dogged Argentina for years. But today, annual inflation reaches 270%. Almost 60% of the country’s 45 million inhabitants live in poverty.
Argentines were exhausted by the anxiety of the news: Anti-government protests furious, labor strikes paralyze cities, President Javier Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, revealing new spending cuts and protesting feminism. This week, your televisions issued dire warnings about the weight reaching new lows in relation to dollar, dragging with it the value of your savings.
The last time Cáceres celebrated his selection in this city center square, he worked as a cook in several restaurants and rented an apartment. Today, he said, he is unemployed and sleeps on the street.
“Everything is horrible right now,” he said after the game finally started in Miami after repeated delays due to fan congestion. “Just when you think things can’t get more expensive, they do.”
Some in this superstitious nation joke that they paid a heavy price in Qatar for their first World Cup victory since 1986, pointing to the crises that followed the triumph. “Has anyone checked the terms and conditions for winning the Copa América?” reads a post on X widely shared among Argentines. “I don’t know if I’m ready for a second round of winning at any cost.”
But the Argentines say they needed this tournament and this trophy more than they could have imagined. For Argentina, South America’s biggest football championship offered not only a glorious achievement, but also an extraordinary, if fleeting, escape.
“It’s our best entertainment, that’s what makes it so important,” said Erika Maya, a 47-year-old homeless mother of six, as she watched the televised game through the glass of a locked restaurant door. “You can forget about everything that’s going on and just enjoy it.”
For each new outrage over the past 24 days, Argentines have found respite from obsessively watching their beloved team, led by Lionel Messi, play for an hour and a half, generating moments of agony and emotion that reverberate throughout this football-mad country. country.
“Football is the fruit of our society, that’s what we’re proud of, it’s what we give to the world,” said soldier Fabrizo Diaz, 21, who watched the game with his girlfriend.
When the game began at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, restaurants in Buenos Aires closed, streets emptied and the booming city fell eerily silent, with most Argentines enslaved to their televisions at home, as if under a lockdown. of COVID. O looming specter of Messi’s retirement football fever has risen in recent weeks, with the 37-year-old captain’s evasive musings in television interviews inducing, in turn, national hope and despair.
“I believe Messi will continue. I don’t know if he’ll make it to the next World Cup, but that’s not the end,” said Adrian Vallejos, 32, watching the final with his wife and son. “I mean, God, I hope so.”
Messi’s persistent leg injuries – including an ankle injury in the second half of the final that took him off the field — drew more attention than his performances in this Copa América. But the Argentines breathed a sigh of relief when asked by ESPN this week if this would be the last blue and white match Messi refused to rule out playing in the 2026 World Cup.
“We are in a very moving transition for this team,” said Alejo Levoratti, sports sociologist at Argentine research institute CONICET. “It was only when he retired that Messi reached his best moment and found this connection with his team, this communion with Argentina.”
Another Argentine great of the same age, Ángel Di María, announced that Sunday’s game would be his last, fueling a wider sense of nostalgia towards the national team. He had tears in his eyes as he left the field and received a standing ovation after Argentina’s decisive goal. “I dreamed of retiring like this,” he told reporters afterward.
After years of disappointments in international tournaments, the Argentine team has more recently achieved triumph after triumph — Copa America 2021, Inaugural game of the 2022 Finals, 2022 World Cup – cheering up his troubled country again and again.
President Milei, who had a short stint as goalkeeper for the professional football team Chacarita Juniors, congratulated the national team in a message in capital letters on the X: “WE ARE CHAMPIONS AGAIN…!!!”
In the trash-strewn center of Buenos Aires, the site of so many protests in recent weeks, national pride seemed, briefly, restored. Friends and strangers draped in Argentine flags and T-shirts hugged and jumped, some singing “Muchachos,” the unofficial anthem of the 2022 World Cup, others chanting Messi’s name.
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