The propaganda campaign against Argentina overshadowed an otherwise great world cup. I don't know how many of you are followers of football/soccer but the world's biggest gaming event (The World Cup) was recently held in the US, Mexico and Canada. I know football is still growing in the US and many of us expected a different World Cup simply because it involved the US and Trump. Obviously with any mention of Trump it makes people either very happy, angry or triggered but what I saw was the politicalization of a World Cup in a way I have never seen in my life. Instead of just enjoying the games as most usually do, people on Twitter/X engaged in conspiracy theories that said FIFA was rigging the World Cup for Argentina. If you know anything about football, Messi, who plays for Argentina, is one of the best players in the world. Argentina were also the reigning champions. Sure some calls went in their favor but some went against them as well.
Usually, the only people who troll Messi are Cristiano Ronaldo (who Is also considered one of the best in the world) fans but this time even people who don't normally watch football started to share posts speaking badly about Messi and FIFA favoring Messi.
It got so ridiculous that people started to call Argentina the most racist country in the world, and while I agree it can come across as a racially insensitive place, I disagree with labelling it a country racist, especially a country you have never been to nor met anyone from that country. There are good and bad people in every country. I know that many of the accusations against Argentina were lies. Many of them are lies. This is deeply concerning.
My conclusion is that this was obviously a very organized and, dare I say, paid campaign against Argentina. And most people on social media and offline fell for this propaganda.
The World Cup is meant to be enjoyed but woke politics and performative activism ruined everything — as usual.
Messi is one of the leading figures in these movements.
Perhaps that is why many people do not like him.
In what ways would you say Messi is woke? He's not very political in public spaces. Most people that love football love Messi imo.
Argentina played good enough to reach the final. We could agree that some calls were at least questionable. At the end, they played the Final against Spain and they only shot twice after 120 minutes, not even once in the 90 minutes.
What we do in sport is say congrats to winning side and try our best to reach the top next time.
It looks like everything has to be around Argentina. It's over , Argentina has had an incredible cycle with the World Cup and America's Cup but it has come to an end.
There is another country at the top now and Argentina just need to rebuild to try winning next one in 2030.
Yeah their cycle has ended. Argentina is a competitive team and will always have talented players but Messi will be a huge loss for them.
I didn’t really notice any of that.
Saw it all over X and people I came into contact with throughout the tournament. Tbh it makes me want to visit Argentina even more now
I did see some people saying that Argentina was getting favourable calls.