{"id":543551,"date":"2026-07-16T00:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T00:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/543551\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T00:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T00:48:09","slug":"world-cup-2026-argentina-face-fine-for-displaying-falklands-banner-after-beating-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/543551\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Argentina face fine for displaying Falklands banner after beating England"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Wednesday’s victory, Argentina vice-president Victoria Villarruel posted on X, external<\/a>, writing “it wasn’t just another match” alongside a video of what appeared to be Argentine soldiers.<\/p>\n

“The Falklands are Argentine,” Villarruel posted. “They banned bringing them to the stadium and forgot that we carry them in our blood and our hearts.” <\/p>\n

In the build-up to the game, Villarruel had said the semi-final was “about putting the invaders in their place”. <\/p>\n

Argentina players also sang chants which referenced the Falklands and Argentina greats Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi following their dramatic 3-2 win over Egypt<\/a> in the last 16. <\/p>\n

However, before the semi-final, manager Lionel Scaloni had said he was “not going to mix” football and politics.<\/p>\n

“The reality is that this is a football match. I can’t mix things up, especially out of respect for what happened so many years ago,” Scaloni had said.<\/p>\n

“It was a very sad period in our history, and there isn’t much we can do about it, that’s the reality.<\/p>\n

“Things are happening elsewhere in the world, and we criticise the existence of war. We certainly remember those people, of course. But it is a football match – we shouldn’t confuse the two.”<\/p>\n

The semi-final, which England lost to late goals from Enzo Fernandez and Lautaro Martinez, was held under increased security measures<\/a> because of the historical tensions between the two nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Wednesday’s victory, Argentina vice-president Victoria Villarruel posted on X, external, writing “it wasn’t just another match” alongside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-543551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}