With Argentina’s progress in the Qatar championship, the streets of Argentine cities have turned more and more blue and white, but before Sunday’s final, fans are falling into a football frenzy.
Some hope that the fortunes of Messi’s team will be brought, for example, by the same jerseys of 1986, when Argentina became world champions for the last time and when they were led to victory by the legendary Diego Maradona. Other inhabitants of this country, from which Pope Francis also comes, believe that the deceased “Diego supports Argentina from above”.
The house where Maradona lived is one of the most popular places in Buenos Aires where fans watch matches during this championship. It was purchased last month by a local businessman and is now home to his friends, locals and other football fans.
“When we started watching matches together, people would cry or faint with emotion when they entered the house,” said the owner of the house, Ariel Fernando García. “I think Maradona was an alien,” added the 47-year-old García exaggeratedly, according to whom no other person has given so much joy to the Argentines.
Some fans believe the same kits the team wore during both Argentina’s World Cup triumphs (1986 and 1978) will bring good luck to Argentina on Sunday. They also wore blue and white shirts at the time, having worn blue in their two World Cup final defeats in 1990 and 2014.
Some on social media also noted that the Polish referee in Sunday’s match has the same birthday as the Brazilian referee in Argentina’s 1986 final against Germany.
Sunday’s match was also discussed on social media by the presidents of both countries, who responded to congratulations on the passage to the final of the future president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
French President Emmanuel Macron was the first to respond, thanking Lula in Portuguese and adding a message to the Argentine head of state. “Dear Albert, one of us will be luckier. See you on Sunday. With all due respect. Go Les Bleus!” he wrote on Twitter. “Dear friend, Emmanuel Macron. I love you so much and wish you all the best for the future. Except Sunday. Argentina is a beautiful country and it is Latin America! Blue and white,” replied President Alberto Fernández.
A number of Argentinian fans are trying to get tickets for Sunday’s final at the last minute. However, the ticket price of the highest category has already risen from around US$1,600 (CZK 38,000) to at least three times, with some even offering them up to US$15,000, Télam agency reported.
Three hundred Argentine fans protested on Thursday in Qatar against the lack of tickets for the final in front of the hotel where the Argentine Football Federation (AFA) delegation is staying. A group called Por favor, Chiqui (Please, Chiqui) was created on the WhatsApp mobile application after the head of the AFA, Claudio Tapia, nicknamed Chiqui. In this group there are Argentines who go to the final and don’t have tickets.
According to the Clarín newspaper, which refers to FIFA sources, another 10,000 tickets will officially go on sale on Saturday evening for Sunday’s final, which will take place in a stadium with a capacity of around 89,000.
On the occasion of Sunday’s final, the Argentine media also wrote about the illness of several players of the French team, which, according to some sources, would be at the root of the virus nicknamed “the camel”, because it is mainly transmitted by these animals.
“The virus that the French players contracted is related to camels and is apparently the MERS coronavirus, which has caused a number of outbreaks in the Middle East over the past two decades,” said Javier Farina, an infectious disease specialist at a hospital in the province. . of Buenos Aires, he told the Télam agency on Thursday, judging by the symptoms of the sick footballers reported by the media.
In humans, the MERS coronavirus shows symptoms similar to covid-19: fever, cough, difficulty breathing, but the camel virus has a higher mortality rate than covid-19.
