MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands government calls Argentine banner insensitive, urges FIFA to sanction

Photo: DAN MULLAN - GETTY IMAGES

The Falkland Islands Government (FIG) has voiced its dismay at the banner with which Argentine players celebrated their World Cup semifinal win over England, and called on FIFA to sanction conduct of that kind in line with its own rules. In a statement issued on Thursday, the Islands' executive said it was “disappointed – though regrettably not surprised” that the Argentine team chose to tarnish the result of a match that in any case did not involve the Falklands.

 The statement notes it is hardly news to anyone that the Islands' people were victims of an aggressive invasion in 1982, which left many traumatized, making the banner “particularly insensitive” for many in the Falklands. The FIG reiterated that it is its avowed policy not to see politics brought into sport, and that it does not wish the Islands and their people to be used as a “political football” in every conversation about England and Argentina. The text welcomed the supportive statement from the UK Government and expressed hope that FIFA would make good on its promise to keep politics out of sport.

The Islands' statement came a day after several Argentine players — among them Giovani Lo Celso, Lisandro Martínez, and Nicolás Otamendi — posed after the final whistle with a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium. According to various accounts, the banner was thrown from the stands and picked up by the players before being briefly laid on the pitch. The defending champions overturned a 1-0 deficit in the closing minutes to win 2-1, with goals from Enzo Fernández and Lautaro Martínez, reaching Sunday's final against Spain.

FIFA's stadium code of conduct prohibits flags and items of a political nature inside venues. As of this writing, the governing body had not announced the opening of disciplinary proceedings, and reports treating a sanction as certain remain speculative. There is a direct precedent: in 2014, FIFA fined the Argentine Football Association around £20,000 over an identical banner displayed before a friendly against Slovenia.

In London, the controversy escalated through Thursday. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer backed the call for an investigation and said Britain's commitment to the Islands would “never waver,” while Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle had called the banner “entirely inappropriate.” Argentina's vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, by contrast reinforced the claim with a message on the social network X — “The Falklands are Argentine” — and had used hostile language toward the United Kingdom in the build-up. Argentina manager Lionel Scaloni had distanced himself before the game: “This is a football match. I can't mix things up, especially out of respect for what happened so many years ago,” he said.

The Falklands, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, remain the subject of a sovereignty dispute between the United Kingdom and Argentina, which claims the archipelago located about 300 miles off its coast. The two countries fought a 74-day war in 1982, which began with the invasion of the Islands by Argentina's then military junta, and in which between 649 and 655 Argentine servicemen, 255 British servicemen, and three islanders died. In the 2013 referendum, 99.8% of islanders voted to remain a British territory