23 million soccer fans want Argentina expelled from the next World Cup - Could FIFA be forced to respond?

The entire world may not have been cheering for Spain in the World Cup final, but there was a big majority of those outside of Argentina hoping that the Albiceleste would lose to the Spaniards. In the end, Spain delivered, and most of the world rejoiced.

Fans turn on Argentina

Usually sentiments aren’t the easiest thing to quantify, but in this case there are numbers to back the disdain that much of the world held for Argentina’s national taeam over the last month and a half. A near record setting number of people signed a petition begging FIFA to ban the three time World Cup winners from the tournament.

Strangely enough, the first three games of Argentina’s campaign were incredible and left people marveling at the sheer genius of Lionel Messi. The Inter Miami man opened the campaign with a hat trick, and scored six goals in the first three group stage games. As the tournament went on their image in the public eye started diminish.

When things got tougher as the tournament went on, there were peculiar decisions made by referees, Argentina antics during some of those matches, and brash, arrogant, unsportsmanlike celebrations after wins that made people turn on this team. Not to mention the way they ended the tournament, trying to start an all out brawl with the Spanish team after losing.

Bad behavior and brawling

The petition was started well before the end of their loss to Spain in the final. In fact it was started after a series of decisions sparked speculation that there may have something behind Argentina getting the benefit of some questionable calls. The petition stated, “Why should the rest of the teams play in the tournament if the winner is known in advance? Exclude Argentina from the World Cup and give everyone a fair chance.”

This stems from a number of decisions that were “given” to Argentina on their way to the World Cup final. A potential red card on Messi against Algeria’s Aissa Mandi was ignored. The Egypt match was shrouded in controversy, with VAR being used when convenient for Argentina, but not for Egypt. A questionable trip to the VAR screen in the Switzerland game resulted in a red card that saw Argentina play with a man advantage for nearly an hour.

On top of that there were celebrations that were over the top and openly provocative from Cuti Romero, Valentin Barco and a load of other players that got under the skin of players, fans and media members around the world. These attitudes mixed with an underlying sense of favoritism caused more than 23 million fans to sign the petition urging FIFA to ban Argentina from the competition.

According to RMC and Eurosport, there were 23,316,108 signatures in favor of FIFA banning Argentina, which came just short of entering a Guiness Book of World Record. The only petition that topped this one was the “Jubilee 2000” campaign that garnered over 24 million signatures in attempts to cancel poor countries debts. In the end FIFA was never going to act on the petition despite the millions signing their name on the dotted line. At the end of the tournament the petition came to an end, and the organizers released a statement saying, “FIFA ignored us, but Spain kept its promise... thank you Spain”.

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