Downing Street has urged Fifa to investigate whether the controversial banner held up by Argentina’s national team at last night’s World Cup match broke its rules against political messages.
Shortly after the team broke English hearts with their late surge to beat the Three Lions 2-1 in the semi-final, the Argentines were handed a white sheet from the crowd.
It read ‘Las Malvinas son Argentinas’ – translating to ‘The Falkland Islands are Argentinian’.
The demonstration has sparked outrage in the UK, with Business Secretary Peter Kyle describing it as ‘entirely inappropriate’ on BBC Breakfast this morning.
He said: ‘Politics needs to be separate from football. In fact, the World Cup has one of its central tenets that politics is separate from football.
‘That is now a matter for Fifa. I expect Fifa to do its investigation thoroughly.’
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No 10 has now backed Kyle’s call for an investigation into the incident, saying: ‘The World Cup might not be ours, but the Falkland Islands definitely are.’
The Argentine Football Association was fined £20,000 by Fifa after the national team’s players posed behind a sign with the same message in 2014.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has argued football’s global body should go further this time.
In a post on X, he wrote: ‘In August 2024 Rodri and Álvaro Morata were rightly banned for one match for singing “Gibraltar is Spain”.
‘Now the Argentine players who celebrated with the “Falklands are Argentine” banner must be barred from the final.’
The UK and Argentina fought a war over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands from April to June 1982, resulting in hundreds of deaths on both sides.
Following the match, Argentina’s vice president Victoria Villarruel wrote on X: ‘It wasn’t just another match!’
Villarruel – whose banner on the site shows the islands overlaid with an Argentinian flag – attached a clip of what appeared to be soldiers in the 1982 war.
She had previously described the English team as ‘usurping pirates’ in a post before the game took place.
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