The enduring memory of last summer’s Olympic rugby sevens was arguably not the magnificence of Antoine Dupont, nor the fairy-tale opening to France’s festivities in front of the eyes of the world, nor the depressing incompetence of Team GB in not managing to salvage a side worthy of qualification.
Indeed, a recollection which remains as vivid as any which took place at the Stade de France during the Olympics’ curtain-raiser in July was that of the hostile reception received by Argentina’s sevens players at virtually every turn, boos and acrimony which notched up to 11 when the two nations met in the quarter-finals and then a week later at the same stage in the men’s football.
This “rivalry” had been brewing for some time. One-way disdain, of the purest form, might be a more apt label for what France now feel towards the South Americans, after a vicious racism and homophobia storm which began during the 2022 World Cup and deepened after the Copa America final last July.
In the same month, the French rugby team visited Argentina in what became a scandal-filled tour that only exacerbated tensions after Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou were alleged to have raped and beaten a woman after meeting her in a nightclub in Mendoza.
The pair were placed under house arrest before being allowed to travel to the French embassy in Buenos Aires. They were allowed to return to France at the start of September but the charges against them – which they deny – remain.
On Friday night, the embittered sides will meet once again on that same Stade de France turf on which Argentina received a hostile sevens welcome. Los Pumas arrive in Paris on the back of a thumping victory over Italy and a narrow loss to Ireland, but even the most optimistic of Argentines will be expecting the hospitality received in both Rome and Dublin not to replicated this weekend.
Rugby players paying for footballers’ behaviour
Not that this has anything to do with Argentina’s rugby team, who will find themselves as punch bags for some of their football counterparts’ deplorable behaviour. It all began in the 2022 football World Cup final, in which Argentina beat France on penalties after a thrilling match. The eventual winners had already made a name for themselves that tournament for their unsporting behaviour – after their quarter-final victory over the Netherlands, also on penalties, they celebrated in the faces of the losing side – but in the final Argentina’s fans took their side’s badboy persona to a new level, chanting a song which was described as both homophobic and racist.
After that match in December 2022, footage emerged from the Argentina dressing room of the players teeing up a song with “a minute’s silence for” followed by goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez shouting “for Mbappé who is dead”. Kylian Mbappé had scored a hat-trick as the final finished 3-3 after normal time.
Back in Argentina, with celebrations ramping up, Martinez held a toy baby with Mbappe’s face on – although the Aston Villa goalkeeper later denied deliberately mocking the Frenchman – during an open-top bus parade, while fans set alight a coffin lid which had been adorned with a picture of the forward.
For a year, relations between the two warring factions continued to simmer; never healing, but never fully erupting. It was in July of this year, however, less than a month before the Olympics were due to start, when the relationship once again hit the headlines – and went into overdrive.
After beating Colombia 1-0 in the Copa America final, several members of the Argentina squad were filmed singing the same song adopted by their fans at the 2022 World Cup, a chant questioning the heritage of France’s black and mixed-race players.
One of those Argentines was Enzo Fernandez, the Chelsea midfielder who is a club team-mate of Wesley Fofana, a Frenchman with an Ivorian father. Fofana described the video as “uninhibited racism” with several of Fernandez’s Chelsea team-mates unfollowing him on Instagram, while former France captain Hugo Lloris said the incident was an “attack on French people”.
Fernandez was forced to apologise for his involvement and there were investigations undertaken by both Chelsea and Fifa, the sport’s global governing body, and the French Football Federation announced that it would file legal complaints against Argentina over the “unacceptable, racist and discriminatory” chants.
Later in July, Fofana would go on to defend Fernandez, saying the Argentina midfielder was “not racist” and that the Frenchman had accepted his apology. “I hope this has educated him a bit, because for sure, it is a different culture,” Fofana said. “We need to educate about this because cultures are different, [in] a lot of countries.” Fernandez also made a voluntary contribution to an anti-discrimination charity.
But the serene, educative and holistic nature of the atonement is likely to be forgotten on Friday night. Parisians, as much as any other denizens, know how to show their discontent. One hopes, given Argentina’s rugby players have nothing to do with the furore, that the boos and whistles might be spared, that France will be able to forgive like Fofana. In reality, however, Los Pumas should pack their earplugs.
