MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina – – My dateline isn’t truly correct. I’m writing the finishing touches on this story on a plane flying above the province of Buenos Aires, with the sprawling lights of the city and its dozens of suburbs stretching out below a fairytale sunset. It truly looks like the upper half of the Argentinian flag is stretched out, enveloping the city as a backdrop. The deep blue twilight sky is banded with a layer of heavy white clouds and the brilliant orange-gold of the sun is fading just over 24 hours removed from La Seleccion’s celestial ascension into the country’s constellation of football history. The first World Cup appearance for La Scaloneta — the era of Leoni Scaloni’s reign as the tecnico of the Argentinian national team — added the long-sought third star to the shirts and banners of the Argentinian Football Association in perhaps the greatest World Cup match we’ve ever seen.
For 36 years, the Argentines had wandered the desert in the wake of Diego Maradona’s virtuoso cup victory in 1986. For 36 years, they cursed players and coaches who failed to realize the talent and passion of the nation, throwing their weight, hopes, dreams, and cash behind teams in a way that perhaps no other country could. How many brilliant players had passed through River Plate, Boca Juniors, Racing, Academia, Newell’s, and the rest on the way to successful club careers in the major European leagues, only to fail at the highest levels of international club play? How many coaches were run out of jobs for misusing the talent of these stars time and time again? How many both on the pitch and on the staff buckled under the pressure of their nation’s expectations when major tournament gold was on the line?
But not this team, not this time. Not when they fell to Saudi Arabia in a stunning upset in the tournament’s opening game, their only loss in the last 43 games of international competition. Not when long-time Lionel Messi partner and offensive creator Angel Di Maria missed the entirety of the knockout stage prior to the final with a quad injury. Not when Inter Milan striker Lautaro Martinez, one of the expected stars of the tournament, showed his poorest form in years and had to be replaced by 22-year old Julian Alvarez.
The song of the tournament, song by Argentines and supporters the world over, has been Muchachos – a paean to the indomitable spirit of the country’s faithful:
“In Argentina I was born, the land of Diego and Lionel,
Of the kids of the Malvinas, I will never forget.
I can’t explain to you, because you will not understand.
The finals that we lost, how many years that we cried.
But that’s over, because in the Maracana
The final with the Brazilians, daddy won it again.
Boys, now we’re starting to dream again.
I want to win the third one.
I want to be champion of the world.
And Diego, in heaven we can see you,
With your mother and father, cheering on Lionel.”
Every individual on the Argentina squad rallied around Messi in a way that was truly beautiful to watch and they sang this song about their dreams after every win. Di Maria, affectionately nicknamed The Noodle by his teammates, told his wife before the match that he would score a goal and win the World Cup in texts she later posted, and delivered on his promise. Alvarez, Alexis Mac Allister, and Enzo Fernandez, all under 23 years old, played brilliantly in the biggest games of their young lives and shared photos and videos of their childhood idolatry of Messi while doing so.
Messi himself was brilliant in a way he’s never before shown at the World Cup. The magician scored in every single knockout game that Argentina played, including twice in the final victory over France. His performance made him the first player to ever score in each knockout round of the tournament. He proved a calming presence for the side in leadership, but also an engine of chaos on the offensive end, turning back the clock with amazing dribbling skills and consistently creating scoring chances for teammates. No one contributed more goals during the tournament and only Mbappe, with eight, outscored Messi’s seven. The wizard now has more goals in major tournaments, more World Cup goal contributions, more World Cup minutes and games played, and more Golden Ball trophies in the tournament than anyone who has ever laced them up. He’s scored more in Copa America and the World Cup than any South American. He’s scored more goals at the World Cup than any Argentine and more international goals for his country than any other compatriot by far. He has won every single major team and individual trophy in the sport. There is no disputing that what is an undeniably brilliant career has led to him being the greatest player who’s ever lived.
More than all of the brilliance on the pitch and the tremendous achievement to bring the cup home to Buenos Aires, this team was simply fucking fun. They were hilarious. They made fun of Papu Gomez for getting a cut to look like David Beckham, they clowned the Brazilians and French in their locker room chants, they made up their own songs to mess with negative journalists, they mocked Rodrigo De Paul for acting like Messi’s bodyguard, Kun Aguero told people to suck his balls on live television, and a million more things. They showed genuine personality and joy to be a part of the team in a way that helped diffuse the pressure and tension that everyone knew was on their shoulders to win for their country and for their captain.
Perhaps no one was funnier than the immortal Emiliano “Dibu” Martinez, who made by far the biggest star turn of the tournament for Argentina. Dibu is from Mar del Plata, the coastal city just a half-hour flight south of Buenos Aires where I watched the game, and has become beloved in record time from his relative anonymity.
Martinez went from April 5, 2017 to June 20, 2020 without seeing action in a Premier League game while under contract for Arsenal, stuck behind Bernd Leno and frequently loaned out to lesser clubs. He attended Argentina’s matches in the 2018 World Cup in Russia as a fan with his brother after not even sniffing the selection. In fact, Martinez was first called up to the senior squad in June 2011 and didn’t make his first appearance for La Seleccion until a qualification match against Chile in June 2021, with just two call-ups as an unused sub in between.
It was in the Copa America on Brazil’s soil that Dibu was unleashed onto the world. Argentina was forced into penalty kicks with Colombia in the semifinal, playing in front of an empty stadium during pandemic measures that allowed the entire world to hear his running stream of dialogue and shit-talk to the Colombian side during penalties. After conceding the first, the goalkeeper began to shout at Davinson Sanchez from the net on the Colombians’ second penalty, all as he began to dive for and stop the kick to the bottom right corner: “I’m going to eat you. I’m sorry, but I will eat you brother.”
Yerry Mina’s third attempt was no different, with dialogue holding a running dialogue with the smiling Colombian as the ref meekly tried to intervene. “You’re not going to celebrate me, are you? You look nervous,” Dibu said. “You’re laughing, but you’re nervous. You’re nervous. You’re nervous. Look, the ball is a little ahead, eh?”
The Colombian player responds, while laughing at Dibu’s antics: “No, it’s on the white mark.”
“Yes yes, play the fool. I already know you. you like to be a show-off. Yes look. Look, if you cross it for me, I’ll cut it for you, eh. Look at how I eat brother, look at how I eat,” he exclaimed again lunging for and saving the ball with outstretched arms, before enthusiastically thrusting at the air like he was humping something.
Between his insanely boisterous personality, his clean sheet against Brazil in the Copa America final, a Golden Glove trophy in both that tournament and the World Cup, and excellent performances in knockout round penalties against both Netherlands and France, Martinez has become omnipresent in Argentinian social media. Images of Dibu pretending the Golden Glove was his dick, twerking in the locker room, leading chants trolling Mbappe and holding a babydoll with the French superstar’s face on it during the championship parade, and generally being an Argentine J.R. Smith for the last week have flooded every app that I open. A half-dozen women I know have posted screencaps of him shirtless after matches with “My body, his choice” superimposed. It’s genuinely beautiful to see, he’s become a sensation.
The joy of being to celebrate the win over France in Dibu’s hometown with my friends there and the riotous party atmosphere intermixed with sobbing tears of genuine joy from grown men who have waited their entire lives for this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I find it difficult to capture in words. I’ve been fortunate enough to be apart of a title celebration for Ohio State on the Columbus campus and to be in Pittsburgh when the Steelers and Penguins won their respective titles, but there is nothing that has even come close to this. My friends screamed and wept, people tried to sell us coke within minutes of the match ending, songs and jubilations rang out from every street for hours, people who argued about seating position hugged and apologized – it was a scene unlike anything I’ve seen.
More than four million people poured into the streets of Buenos Aires on Tuesday when the team returned home. People lined the streets of the highway all the way from Ezeiza International Airport to the team’s hotel in Buenos Aires, a nearly 20-mile drive, when they arrived home late on Monday night. The caravan procession itself had to be ended with the team being airlifted out of the city on helicopter because the streets were too choked for the vehicles to move. Fans jumped from a bridge onto the team bus at one point to try to touch the players, with some falling off into the street below. The people scaled the Obelisco (identical to the Washington Monument, but about half the size) and the streetlights and the flagpoles and everything else they could. The players were drinking red wine and fernecitos out of the botella cortada (a cut plastic bottle that’s something working class people drink on the streets), they had Otamendi rolling up a joint on the caravan, and a million more things. It was unbelievable.
Between the win and the parade, I couldn’t tell you how many times we sang that song. So many of my friends here have talked about the way the hyperinflation has robbed them of any real expectations for an economic future without leaving the country and how frustrating the government has been locally, but the sheer joy and dreaming of a win like this washes it away for a while. That is the genuine beauty of both sports and art – it is simultaneously a powerful escape from reality of your present situation and one of the most powerful connectors to your fellow human beings you can have in an atomized and isolated digital world. The weeping and singing and chanting was church for tens of millions, community and hope where there have been none for years.
I’ll leave you with one final song, another testament to the Argentinian nation:
“Ole ole ole, ole ole ola.
Every day I love you more.
I am Argentinian, it’s a feeling I cannot stop.”