Qatar 2022 marked a turning point. In the quarterfinals against the Netherlands, Argentina won on penalties after a match with eighteen yellow cards. At the time I thought it was an understandable bias toward an idol many saw at his last opportunity. The narrative seemed perfect.
But Messi didn't retire, and the same officiating dynamics kept showing up. Against Cape Verde and against Egypt, fouls that would have cost any other national team an ejection ended up resolved with simple cautions. Social media caught the clips immediately. Former referees pointed out inconsistencies that go beyond the usual human error.
What's revealing appears when you step back a bit from the specific refereeing calls. A constant pattern of racist comments emerges from the stands and platforms every time Argentina faces African national teams or Black players. After the World Cup final, Mbappé and the French team received attacks with explicit racial undertones, sometimes disguised as sporting criticism. In the matches against Cape Verde and Egypt, witnesses recorded discriminatory chants that in other leagues would trigger institutional sanctions and formal reviews.
This constant connects with in-group preference dynamics: humans favor what's close to us and justify punishing those we perceive as different. This isn't a trait exclusive to one country. But in Argentina that tendency intertwines with a specific history of nation-building that's worth examining.
In the eighteenth century, Buenos Aires was home to a Black population that came to represent up to a third of its inhabitants. Epidemics, wars that disproportionately used Afro-descendant soldiers, and a deliberate policy of massive European immigration reduced that presence until it became nearly invisible. The myth of a country without Black people settled in as common sense, and that narrative was never fully dismantled.
Repeated narratives function as social dividers without needing any central propaganda. The idea of Argentina as a white, European enclave in South America defined belonging and hierarchies in ways nearly invisible to those who grew up within it. These stories resist scrutiny because they touch identity itself, not just memory.
The possible connection between favorable officiating and structural racism is unsettling, even if it isn't a direct causal link. Both phenomena share a root in the cultural conviction of exceptionalism. When the national team faces African rivals, the mental framing carries a pre-existing hierarchy built in. That sense of deserving different treatment may explain the social tolerance toward decisions that benefit the home team.
There's no evidence of an organized refereeing conspiracy. It's more accurate to attribute much of what's been observed to collective bias, media pressure, and the usual advantage big teams receive. Brazil, Germany, and Spain have experienced similar situations. The phenomenon isn't unique to Argentina.
What is documented are the patterns of racism in the stands and online: reports from anti-racist organizations, recordings, and screenshots confirm it. Argentina shares this reality with other countries. What's different is that its particular history of whitening adds a layer that still hasn't been processed the way it has in Brazil or Colombia.
This case reveals the tensions of a society that celebrates its greatest idol while that same idol embodies the founding myth. I still don't have a clear answer for how to resolve the discomfort that arises when the mirror of sporting success reflects, at the same time, the gaps in an identity built on exclusions.
What happens when sporting triumph reinforces precisely the narratives a society would need to question?
Sources
1. Jay Report (2014) on institutional cover-up in the United Kingdom — methodological reference on institutional denial of racism, used comparatively.
2. Reports from anti-racist soccer organizations (FARE Network) on discriminatory incidents in recent World Cups.
3. Historical records on the decline of the Afro-Argentine population in nineteenth and twentieth century censuses (academic sources on racial demographics in Argentina).
4. Social media and sports media analysis on refereeing decisions in Argentine national team matches, Qatar 2022 and subsequent games.
