In early September, I sat down with Argentine Finance Minister Sergio Massa during a visit to Washington. Massa, dubbed a “super” minister for the multiple set of portfolios he holds while running his nation’s beleaguered economy, was in the U.S. capital as part of a broader effort to stabilize a perilous situation. Debt-ridden Argentina, its foreign reserves depleted, was on the brink of hyperinflation. There were trade deals to be brokered and International Monetary Fund negotiations to be hammered out.
At the
time, inflationary pressures were swirling around Washington, too, and I asked
Massa whether there were any lessons Americans could draw from Argentina’s
chronic experience of fiscal crises. “We are always learning,” Massa told me
bluntly. “We cannot teach anything to anyone.”
In the
months since, Massa has held the line, staving off the worst fears of economic
analysts. He is now one of the favorites to take up the mantle of the battered
and divided Peronist political establishment in elections next year. But
conditions are still grim: Inflation does not appear to be decelerating and
almost 40 percent of the country’s population now lives below the poverty line.
“Today
the economy is held together by a battery of price and exchange controls,”
noted the Economist. “Even so, inflation will be close to 100 percent this
year, and in the (tolerated) black market the peso is worth less than a quarter
of its value three years ago. The government lives from week to week.”
Enter
the World Cup. For the past month, Argentines have themselves lived week to
week, day by day, off the fortunes of their beloved national soccer team in
Qatar. On Sunday, Argentina faces a date with destiny, going up against France
in the World Cup final. Victory would mark a third World Cup title for the
soccer-mad South American nation and the crowning triumph in the already
peerless career of Argentine forward Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest to
play the game.
The
prospect of that victory has consumed the national imagination. Though they
live thousands of miles away from the Gulf emirate, Argentines comprise one of
the biggest blocs of fans who have traveled to Qatar — a reality that is
audible to anyone attending or watching Argentina’s matches during the World
Cup.
“The
World Cup is an opportunity to recover enthusiasm in a country that is
enormously frustrated and filled with an overwhelming feeling of failure,” said
José Abadi, a psychiatrist in Buenos Aires, to The Washington Post before the
World Cup began. “It’s a chance of winning for once and attaining global
recognition for how good our soccer is rather than for how much money we owe.”
So great
was the mania for the tournament that, in the weeks prior to it starting, a
shortage in collectible baseball-card-like stickers generated a genuine
political crisis. “The government had to make a special meeting on how to deal
with the shortage of stickers because it was affecting the people’s mood,”
Argentine journalist Martin Mazur said on a recent podcast. “And now even with
the high inflation, thousands of people are trying to be [in Qatar] for the
semifinal and finals, literally putting all their money they have saved for
many years just to be here and celebrate.”
For
Massa and his allies, there’s a clear silver lining. “In Argentina, people are
talking about nothing else,” wrote Federico Rivas Molina in Spanish daily El
Pais. “Victory over Croatia last Tuesday in the semifinals has shaped the
public discourse. Families discuss where they will watch the final against
France on Sunday, and politicians are keeping their heads down to avoid
attracting attention.”
Soccer,
likely more than any other sport, has a capacity for delivering moments of
transcendence. Morocco’s run to the semifinals of this tournament triggered an
astonishing outpouring of love and solidarity from across the Middle East, the
Arab world and Africa, and will be remembered fondly in years to come.
Argentina
still sits under the voluminous shadow of its late soccer legend Diego
Maradona, who powered his nation to World Cup triumph in 1986 and, by sheer
dint of his fame and irrepressible persona, built a legion of Argentina
supporters all around the world. To the eyes of fanatics in countries as far
away as India and Bangladesh, Messi is only walking in Maradona’s footsteps.
Indeed,
Messi has been haunted by Maradona’s legacy. For all the trophies and accolades
he won at the club level in Europe, Messi never engendered the same affection
at home as Maradona, who achieved something that still eluded the sublimely
talented forward. Messi faced crushing defeats, including at the World Cup
final in 2014 and an ignominious exit in Russia in 2018. Tormented by failure,
Messi even briefly retired from the national team.
But as
the 35-year-old Messi nears the twilight of his career — he admitted to reporters
this week that this is almost certainly his last World Cup — the fervor around,
and love for, him has intensified. In the stadiums in Qatar, Argentine fans
sing of their country as the “land of Diego and Leo” and seem almost to be
willing him onward to the ultimate victory.
In the
press box of the group-stage game between Argentina and Poland, an Argentine
reporter put it to me that, for years, his nation waited for Messi to win them
the World Cup. Now, he said, it’s the nation that wants to win it for Messi.
In this
context, defeat against France, the reigning world champions, may be quite hard
to stomach. Some in Argentina are trying to keep perspective. The country’s
labor minister, Kelly Olmos, reminded reporters how little changed when they
won the 1978 World Cup, hosted controversially in Argentina by the country’s
military dictatorship.
“We were
under dictatorship, persecuted, we didn’t know what tomorrow held, but
Argentina became champions and we went out to celebrate in the streets,” Olmos
said. “And then we went back to the reality, which was unrelenting.”
Argentina’s
fans may be hoping for a greater reprieve. The magic of soccer is that “it
gives us the possibility of a happiness that is both transient and eternal,”
Argentine writer Ariel Scher told Agence France-Presse. “No problems will be
resolved or eliminated but at the same time, even briefly, it dazzles us with
something that leaves a lasting memory.”
How to
handle that fleeting moment of grace, the thrill of an overwhelming glory, may
indeed be a lesson Argentines want to teach the world.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/argentina-beset-by-domestic-woes-sees-salvation-in-qatar/ar-AA15le9M