Argentine President Javier Milei flew to meet French President Emmanuel Macron at the ongoing Paris Olympics after tensions escalated between their countries over the Argentine soccer team’s derogatory post-match chants about French players
Argentina’s Enzo Fernandez shared a short clip from the team’s Copa America victory celebrations in Miami earlier this month. The footage shows triumphant Argentine players chanting a song considered racist toward French players of African heritage.
‘They play for France but their parents are from Angola,’ the refrain goes, with some transphobic slurs mixed in.
French officials castigated the Argentina athletes in the Instagram live video posted by Fernandez, who has since publicly apologized. The French soccer federation filed a legal complaint over the ‘unacceptable racist and discriminatory remarks.’ Fernandez’s English club Chelsea started an internal disciplinary procedure.
‘Argentina is the enemy in France,’ was a headline Thursday in Argentine newspaper Clarín, citing the deafening boos and jeers that greeted the Argentine national anthem in Paris.
Censure from the soccer world snowballed into a political scandal last week when Argentina’s conservative vice president, Victoria Villarruel, defended Fernandez and the team, saying that Argentina would not tolerate criticism from a ‘colonialist’ country.
In a widely shared social media post, she insisted that Argentina was not a racist country because, unlike France, ‘We never had colonies or second-class citizens. We never imposed our way of life on anyone.’
Enough with faking indignation, hypocrites,’ she added.
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