Conspiracy! What Went Down in Argentina’s Locker Room Before the World Cup Final? | OneFootball

Because nothing in the present day in age can be taken at face value, Argentina’s flat performance in the 2026 World Cup final has been the subject of various conspiracy theories. We dive into the wackiest and most intriguing, rating their believability for good measure.

On the afternoon of July 19, New York City buzzed with the kind of anticipation that can only spring from something truly magical. The greatest city in the world hosting the culmination of the greatest sporting event in the world, what could be more perfect?

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As I walked up 8th Avenue, the unmistakable blue and white of Argentina shirts glimmered in the midday sun at every street corner. A drum-banging duo accompanied a marching group of Argentinean fans, leading such classic songs as “La Cuarta Estrella” and “Brasil, Decime Que Se Siente.”

The Albiceleste faithful had every reason to be in full voice prior to the 2026 World Cup final. Their team had overcome accusations of FIFA favoritism, racism among fans and players, and the geopolitical minefield of contesting a semifinal against hated rivals England.

But as I settled into my seat at the viewing party (I couldn’t swing the price of a used Nissan Altima for a ticket to the actual game), it became immediately clear that something just wasn’t right. The players weren’t belting out the national anthem with the same verve as usual. The lineup chosen by Lionel Scaloni seemed unbalanced and ill-suited for the massive pressure Spain were about to unleash on them. The vibes, as the kids say, were all wrong.

The game unfolded in a strange manner. An Argentina squad rife with technicians seemed unable to complete simple passes. One of the most dangerous teams all tournament failed to register a shot during the 90 minutes of regular time, with Lionel Messi resembling a castaway forlornly looking on from his desert island out on the right-hand side. Spain, meanwhile, launched countless salvos, and the Argentina defense seemed resigned to a battle of bend, don’t break.

Center backs Cristian Romero and Lisandro Martinez each exited with mysterious injuries, then appeared to be fine after the game. Lautaro Martinez, goalscoring hero against England and veteran of countless World Cup penalty shootouts, didn’t even see the field as a result of the obligatory defensive substitutions. Enzo Fernandez got himself sent off for two comically silly yellow cards, and when Ferran Torres finally found the back of Dibu Martinez’s net in the 106th minute, the exhausted faces of the Argentinean team didn’t seem particularly up for launching another classic remontada. At full time, the normally even-keeled Leandro Paredes tried to kill one of those Barcelona kids with only one name. I can’t remember which.

But what the hell, guys?!? How did this team, which under Scaloni had literally never lost a competitive knockout game and employed the greatest player ever to have laced up a pair of boots, manage to lose a World Cup Final without so much as a whimper of resistance?

In the aftermath, we debated the Xs and Os. Scaloni should’ve started two strikers! Messi needed to drop deeper!

But then, seemingly dropped from the heavens by the trembling mitt of Diego Maradona himself, an explanation befell the Argentinian fanbase. A reeeeeal conspiratorial one.

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A video shot immediately before the final showed Messi, perturbed, imploring his teammates to calm down and focus on the game.

“Come on, lads, stay calm. The most important thing is that you stay calm,” Messi insisted. “Let’s forget everything that happened. Let’s just play. Let’s focus on the match, lads.”

Fernandez looked like he might cry. Paredes cut a furious figure. For a team that stormed to the 2022 title on positive vibes, this group looked shaken to its core by something. The woebegone faces of the Argentina team have sparked a raft of internet conspiracies, hellbent on getting to the bottom of whatever had unsettled the South American camp in the minutes prior to the match.

Now, plenty of connected Argentineans, chief among them Alexis Mac Allister’s father, Carlos, have insisted that the video has been taken out of context, that Messi’s implorations were tactical in nature, nothing more.

I don’t generally count myself among the conspiracy theorists of the world (I have family members who won’t vaccinate their kids and that bothers me), but an organization as cartoonishly corrupt and brazen as FIFA provides fertile soil for their growth and spread. Occam’s razor applied, we must assume that Argentina just had a really bad day and Spain played them off the pitch.

But, heck! I’m old enough to remember when FIFA had clearly fixed the tournament so that Argentina would definitely win it. So, in the spirit of basically this whole World Cup from start to finish, let’s take a minute to examine the most interesting and entertaining explanations for Messi’s cryptic pregame speech, and rate just how plausible they might be.

Messi Announced His Retirement

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The idea that the legend from Rosario would choose to hang up his botines after this year’s World Cup should come as a surprise to no one. He’s 39, and reportedly spends an easy two-thirds of every match walking around, spinning his head around like a barn owl. But maybe the concrete nature of an announcement, of hearing it directly from Messi’s mouth, led some of the junior members of the team, having grown up inspired by Leo’s greatness, to react emotionally.

It’s like your favorite teacher retiring. You might know that it’s going to happen, might have made your peace with it internally, but you never quite know how you’ll react on that very last day sitting in class, the finality of it all creeping in like the rising tide. We know that Messi has had a difficult tournament on a personal level, with rumors of his father’s health swirling, and exaggerated reports of a possible death getting at least one Argentine journalist fired from her job. Maybe he cried in the locker room, the notion of playing his last ever game for the Albiceleste in a gosh-darned World Cup final being too much to wrap his head around.

The tense moment before contesting a World Cup final seems like an odd time to announce your international retirement, but then again this is Messi. Perhaps he imagined that it might light a fire under his compatriots, giving them via emotion what had been physically sapped from their legs and their hearts in the four heated knockout games they’d only just survived. If this was, in fact, the root of the discontent within the Argentina camp, it was a generational overthink, a miscalculation that might have cost this group a place atop the pedestal as the greatest international team in history.

Believability: 6/10

FIFA Threatened Sanctions for the “Malvinas” Banner

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After defeating archrivals England in dramatic fashion, Argentinean players Giovanni Lo Celso and Lisandro Martinez paraded around what looked like a hotel bed sheet scrawled with the message “Las Malvinas son Argentinas,” which translates to “The Falklands are Argentine.”

Without delving into the underlying geopolitical nuance, suffice it to say that FIFA does not take kindly to these kinds of political displays at their always above-board, unproblematic tournaments. Despite the fact that this was a banner World Cup (no pun intended) for political involvement, given the whole Balo-gate scandal, calls immediately rang out for punishment to be handed down to these players and, more broadly, the Argentinean federation. The English FA, as well as former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, minced no words in calling for retribution against former Tottenham player Lo Celso and the rest of his sheet-waving cohort.

This put FIFA in somewhat of a sticky wicket. You can’t have a team win the World Cup, and then have to go back and strip it over a political display that clearly ran afoul of FIFA’s own rules and regulations. We saw how Senegal reacted after being stripped of this year’s AFCON title: the team simply carried on as if they’d won anyway, parading the trophy through the streets of Dakar under a deluge of tickertape.

Lastly, what would happen if FIFA just let the whole thing go, not sanctioning Argentina in any capacity? Gianni Infantino, despite seeming entrenched in power atop FIFA’s golden throne, certainly wouldn’t want to risk a broad revolt from member nations and federations.

FIFA couldn’t have possibly excluded Argentina from the final, as there would have been precious little time to carry out any sort of investigation, let alone hold any sort of kangaroo court proceedings to justify the decision. So how could FIFA manage to avoid the embarrassment of crowning a champion and subsequently stripping them of the title?

Some internet theorists have posited that FIFA threatened Argentina with a 10-year ban over the Malvinas banner. This ban, according to the theory, would not be imposed should Argentina throw the match and lose the final.

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This harkens back to a long-running Argentinean conspiracy theory related to the 1990 World Cup Final, which was a similarly turgid affair to this year’s edition. Argentina were knocking on the door of repeating as champions, but according to Maradona, the fix was in before the game even kicked off. The diminutive legend from Villa Fiorito claimed that then-FIFA President Joao Havelange was entangled with the Italian mafia, with whom he conspired to prevent Argentina from winning the World Cup.

When Maradona was subsequently banned from the 1994 edition for a positive drug test, he insinuated that it amounted to retribution on the part of FIFA against Maradona, a punishment for having aired their dirty laundry.

A threat of this nature would certainly explain the insipid Argentinean performance in the final, but doesn’t make a lot of sense given that Argentina were actually pretty close to winning this thing. The makeshift backline and Emiliano Martinez defended heroically, and Marcos Senesi came agonizingly close to equalizing from a Messi cross in the dying moments of the contest. Might this speak to a difference of opinion in the Argentina camp? Would a 10-year ban have been worth it to the likes of Messi, already on his way out the door? Did he and a few others refuse to kowtow to FIFA’s pressure, with the prospect of lifting another World Cup too tantalizing?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t reiterate that this is all completely insane speculation, and that I don’t actually believe any of it. But plenty of people do, and that’s a problem. FIFA’s lack of transparency and obvious flouting of their own rules over the course of this tournament has served only to stoke the flames of conspiracy. These internet sleuths might look silly in their tinfoil hats, but it doesn’t help that Infantino and Co. won’t stop flashing illuminati iconography at them.

Believability: 1/10 

Chiqui Tapia Was About to Get Arrested by the FBI

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Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia has been president of the Argentinean Football Association since 2017, and it’s safe to say that he has presided over a veritable golden age for the Albiceleste. In an era dominated by European clubs and national teams, he oversaw the program that brought the World Cup trophy back to South America for the first time in 20 years. He was instrumental in the hiring of Scaloni as manager, a move which initially seemed a stopgap measure but ended up looking like a stroke of genius.

But scandals have been erupting all around the Argentinean FA, and Tapia is running out of duct tape to patch up his leaky boat. An ESPN investigation revealed systemic exploitation at the youth levels of Argentinean soccer, centering around harsh treatment and unsanitary conditions at academy programs across the country. The FBI has been investigating the AFA for tax evasion and the use of shell companies involving a whopping sum of $260 million dollars of laundered money. Tapia himself is also under investigation back in Argentina for alleged Social Security fraud.

The very fraught and public feud between Tapia and Argentinean president Javier Milei hasn’t helped matters. Milei has pushed for increased outside investment in Argentinean club teams through the use of “sports corporations,” while the Argentinean FA and Tapia insist that this model would threaten the identities and autonomy of Argentina’s proudest sporting institutions.

Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok

Milei, a right-wing firebrand, is a good friend (and some might say lackey) of one Donald Trump. Tapia and his supporters have insisted that the FBI investigation is a political stunt, an example of Trump using his Justice Department as a cudgel to go after the enemies of his buddies. It would be a lot easier to chalk this theory up to the lunacy of conspiracy theorists if Trump didn’t already have a documented history of doing this.

So here’s the conspiracy theory that’s been making the rounds. As the Argentinean team prepared to contest the final against Spain, the players received word that FBI agents were waiting in New York to publicly arrest Tapia and a raft of other high-ranking AFA delegates. Given that Tapia has cultivated close personal relationships with the likes of Messi and Rodrigo De Paul, this news, real or otherwise, would come as a terrifying shock to the players.

In the aftermath of the final, we’ve come to learn that Tapia was not, in fact, arrested by the FBI. But it might only take one well-sourced rumor to plant that idea in the heads of the players. This could explain Messi begging his teammates to “focus on the match.” It’s not a stretch to imagine that their heads were elsewhere, as some of the most ball-assured players in the world struggled to complete relatively simple passes.

Only time will reveal the results of the myriad investigations into the Argentinean FA. For a federation president, he seems unusually involved in the day-to-day operations of the national team, and his possible ouster may signal a much-needed culture shift in Argentinean soccer.

Believability: 4/10

Argentina Saw what Spain did to France and Were Afraid

The likeliest (and least fun) explanation for Messi’s mysterious video is that this team was simply out of gas. They had played a boatload of games in relatively few days, suffering extra time against Cabo Verde and Switzerland. The adrenaline boost of besting England with a heroic comeback would have already left their bloodstreams. Getting themselves back up for another emotional battle proved to be a bridge too far.

Did the pregame tactics talk get heated? How would Argentina deal with Spain’s high-octane midfield led by that guy who used to go to sleepaway camp in Connecticut? (God, I’m sick of hearing about that.) Did the players disagree with Scaloni’s tactics, particularly the inclusion of Nico Gonzalez and Gonzalo Montiel from the jump?

Spain arrived at New York/New Jersey Stadium without the late-game drama, political intrigue, and generational shift experienced by the Argentineans. They didn’t need extra time or penalties in any of their knockout games, they kept clean sheets in six of their seven games, and there was no reason for them to fear the South Americans.

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Messi coming back to play in the 2026 World Cup was always going to be a risk. He could have ridden off into the sunset, leaving us with the trophy lift at Lusail as our last image of him in the blue and white of Argentina. But he decided to let it ride once more, in his mind a one-in-48 shot at another title too much to pass up. And as he lined up against a superior Spain team, it’s possible that his shortcomings in this last and greatest moment rippled out and became the shortcomings of his entire squad, the beautiful collective that he’d spent years crafting in his image.

We don’t know what inspired the odd pregames scenes depicted in that peculiar video. We might never know. But what I’ve taken from all this is that FIFA, in their supervillanous ways, have done little to assuage doubt and intrigue. If their average soccer fan can’t bring themself to trust the game’s top authority, they’d do well to take a hard look at themselves in the mirror, although Infantino and his “creature of the night” posse probably don’t cast a reflection!

Believability: 8/10