SPANISH MINDSET

¡Hola! Have you ever wondered why Argentinians are such big fans of football (soccer)? In this post you will find out.

Little Introduction: Argentinian football.

Well, the first thing you need to know is that in Argentina, football is almost like a religion. In Argentina, we always make a joke here: when you’re with family or friends, you shouldn’t talk about politics, religion, or football—three crucial things you can’t talk about with your family, because normally, conversations about these topics in the family are always different and can lead to problems with your family over little things like this. So now you know, my recommendation is that if you’re with an Argentinian or many Argentinian people, don’t talk about these three topics. But of course, that depends on you.

You already know that in Argentina, football is lived like a religion. You also need to know that we have the five most important teams in Argentina: Boca Juniors, River plate, then we have Independiente de Avellaneda, Racing, and Estudiantes de La Plata or San Lorenzo. There’s a big discussion, but basically, these are the five most important teams in Argentina. We also have several different leagues. The main one, the most important, is the Primera División (First Division), and then we have different categories below that. But in Argentina, the Primera División and the second, third, or fourth divisions are lived with the same intensity. It’s lived with a lot of fanatism, a lot of energy, and a lot of love for the lower divisions. If you go to a Primera match and if you go to a second division match, it’s almost the same. The energy, love, and fanatism are the same.

Another thing you need to know is that if you walk down the street in Buenos Aires or any other part of Argentina, you’ll see tons and tons of murals, drawings, or graffiti on the walls about football, about Messi, about Maradona, about the World Cup, and many other different teams. It’s very normal, for example, that if you visit a city and that city has a very important team, or the team that lives in that city, it’s very normal to find a lot of graffiti or drawings about that team in the city. So you will see them everywhere.

Another important thing you need to know is that if you have a shirt, for example, from a football team, let’s say River, for example, if you have the River jersey or t-shirt, and you go to La Boca, which is the city or neighborhood of the famous Boca Juniors club, I invite you to visit it. If you go to this place with a River shirt, it’s literally the city of Boca Juniors. So, it’s like a way of messing with the fans of that club, and it’s important not to do this because it’s considered an offense or something a bit aggressive. I think this is the same everywhere in the world and in all cities, but well, it’s important to remember that in Argentina, it’s exactly the same. So don’t wear shirts from different teams in cities of a particular team.

Now, why is the Argentinian so passionate about football?

Well, you need to know that the Argentinian is not only a fan of football, but the Argentinian is a fan of anything Argentinian. That is, if you’re Argentinian and you do a sport, it could be football, it could be Formula 1, for example, Franco Colapinto in Formula 1, or it could be basketball, volleyball, handball, or any other sport. The Argentinian will always be a fan of the Argentinian athlete, just as much as with football. Why? Because in the Argentine DNA or in our way of thinking, fanatism and, we could say, nationalism are super important. That’s why in football, we transmit or have that nationalism or fanatism for our football, for the players, and for the sport.

So, you need to know that the average Argentinian is a person who’s fanatical—fanatical about football, fanatical about politics. It’s a person who is usually on the extremes. It’s a person who is usually not in the middle, always on the extremes of almost everything. So, this is something cultural that you need to understand, and we transmit this cultural thing in football. Maybe you think this is a negative aspect of the Argentinian, but not at all. We can say that we live things much more intensely.

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