In Buenos Aires, after Argentina's World Cup win: 'We deserved this joy so much!' (2024)

A blue and white lava flowed into the streets of Buenos Aires on Sunday, December 18, just minutes after Argentina beat France at the 2022 football World Cup in Doha, Qatar. After a comfortable first half, in which Argentina looked assured to regain its world champions title, enthusiastic Albiceleste fans gradually switched to consternation as France was equalizing. Their nerves and confidence, which since the start of the competition had been rock solid, started to waver.

So they celebrated the result (3-3, 4-2) with the tears of those whom history ends up proving right. Near a bar in Buenos Aires, as soon as the final whistle blew, a woman threw herself to the ground and shouted: "My country, my country. Argentina!" Cars honked their horns, with flags waving from the windows. Visibly unafraid of slightly overdoing things, some waved flags of the size of bedsheets.

A policeman looked on with his chin up and his hands behind his back, looking professional. But his eyes were shining. The blue of the Argentinian flags seemed to echo the clear blue afternoon sky of this (almost) southern summer. Like the rest of the southern hemisphere, Argentinians enjoyed the pleasures of a summer World Cup for the first time since 1930. Soon, a million of them, according to newspaper Clarin, converged on Buenos Aires' obelisk, the epicenter of football passion in Argentina's capital.

'France was a great rival'

"Didn't you just become world champion?" a man, wearing Messi's jersey, teased a passer-by with an Albiceleste wig. "WE just became champions!" the other answered proudly. Young women improvised dance steps, with no real music except for the chants of: "Argentina, Argentina!" sung like a mantra, and also "Messi, Messi." "Messi is our messiah," Elena, a 31-year-old sociologist, said.

A love affair with the captain and, by extension, with the whole team, was behind the burning desire for victory. "Our joy is for Messi, this World Cup was for him," Maria, a 42-year-old musician, said as if the relief of seeing Lionel Messi happy added to the collective happiness. Messi, 35, can now look back on his career and breathe in a sigh of relief: he has lifted the cup, like Diego Maradona in 1986. The Paris Saint-Germain player can finally step out of Maradona's shadow.

Some 36 years after Argentina had won the world cup, a generation was able to experience what winning at the very top feels like. Until then, the elders had told them about it. In the district of Villa Crespo, in the center of Buenos Aires, a human flag was gloating. His face was completely covered in blue and white makeup. The Sun of May, the emblem which appears in the middle of the Argentine flag, was a yellow dot on his nose. The color scheme was repeated on his calves, his hands and his hair. "This is what happens when we all work together and want it!" he said. "We have to be united! In Argentina and in all of Latin America."

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