MIAMI, July 2 (Reuters) \u2013 Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said the country\u2019s football fans were like a 12th man for the team as thousands of them landed in Miami on Thursday, the eve \u200bof their World Cup clash against Cape Verde.<\/p>\n
The tropical city has \u200cbeen home to captain Lionel Messi since he joined Inter Miami in 2023 and some 30,000 other Argentines are resident in southern Florida, the largest concentration in any conurbation in the United States.<\/p>\n
Some estimates suggest the support for Messi and his teammates in \u200cthe \u200bcity will be 60,000-strong by the time the \u2060round-of-32 match against the African \u2060outsiders kicks off on Friday and Scaloni welcomed them.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir support is something that I love,\u201d he told his pre-match news conference at Miami Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel their support, they strengthen us and it\u2019s not extra pressure \u200bfor us. I hope that they enjoy seeing their team and hopefully we can bring them joy.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur fans are our 12th player. Our players \u2060were Argentina fans when they were little. \u2060Now they\u2019re wearing this jersey. I think that this shows \u200bthe team\u2019s character.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sky blue and white striped shirt that gives the three-time \u200bworld champions their \u201cAlbiceleste\u201d nickname was ubiquitous as hundreds of Argentina \u200cfans gathered at a beachside park for a \u201cBanderazo\u201d, or pep rally, on Friday.<\/p>\n
Argentina flags and banners, some featuring Messi and his fellow footballing icon Diego Maradona holding aloft the World Cup, were hung from trees as huge hunks \u2060of beef were grilled on charcoal and driftwood barbecues.<\/p>\n
Once an early thunderstorm had cleared, drums pounded and music played as some fans braved the seaweed-clogged ocean \u2060to chant songs in \u200cpraise of their heroes.<\/p>\n
While Scaloni was wary of the \u2060threat presented by underdogs Cape Verde, many Argentina fans \u200bwere less \u200ccautious.<\/p>\n
\u201cArgentina is going to come away with a very \u200bgood 3-0, \u20602-0 victory, and that\u2019s it,\u201d said Geronimo Guenen.<\/p>\n
\u201cArgentina has everything it needs to win; it has a very good team, Messi is in very good form, he\u2019s had that throughout his career, and now, above all, we can compete with anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, Joyce Zhou, Ayhan Uyanik and Amanda Perobelli, editing \u200bby Toby Davis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI, July 2 (Reuters) \u2013 Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said the country\u2019s football fans were like a 12th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-327929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}