4 Things You Should Know About Football in Argentina

Introduction

Football is the most popular sport of Argentina. As per FIFA‘s record, Argentina Football have the most numbers of registered players in the world that is 2,658,811, it has 2,327,000 registered clubs and 3,377 unregistered club. Football is the most well known recreational sport of Argentineans. 90 % of Argentineans are known to be supporters of one of the Argentina football clubs.

History

In latter half of the19th century it were British immigrants who launched football in Buenos Aires. Two British migrants Thomas and James Hogg held a meeting on May 9, 1868 in Buenos Aires where they established Buenos Aires Football Club. The Buenos Aires Cricket Club permitted the newly founded football club to use the cricket field located in Parque Tres de Febrero in Palermo. On 20 June 1867 the first official football match was played in Argentina in Parque Tres de Febrero cricket field. Two teams of British merchants, namely, the Red Caps and the White Caps played the sport.

The first Argentina football league was played in 1891 - it was the third oldest league in the football world. The Argentina Football Association (AFA) was established in 1893, the 8th oldest football association in the world.

Features

The Argentina Football team is among the eight nations to have won the football World Cup. They have won the football world cup in the year 1978 and 1986. They were the runners-up in the year 1930 and 1990. They have won the South Americas most admired football tournament - the Copa America, on fourteen occasions. The Argentina football team has won two Gold Medals in 2004 and 2008. Their under-20 football team has won U-20 World Cups on six occasions.

There is cut-throat football rivalry between Brazil and Argentina. They have learned the game from Europeans but have developed their own style of playing it. The Argentina Football has given birth to many top football legends of the world. Some of them are Alfredo DiStefano, Daniel Passarela, Diego Maradona, Gabriel Omar Batistuta and Messi.

Diego Maradona the prince of Argentina Football is considered as the best players of all time. Maradona is the winner of FIFA Player of the Century award. In his football career he played in four FIFA World Cup tournaments, in 1986 tournament he captained Argentina and triumphed over West Germany in the final. He was selected as the best player of the tournament and won the Golden Ball award.

In the same tournaments quarterfinal, he made two goals against the team of England. Both goals have their own significance in the football world. The first one was via handball (unrealized by referee) known as the "Hand of God", while in the second goal he dribbled through six English players, which is considered as "The Goal of the Century".

Messi another great player of this time is considered as the successor of Maradona. He won FIFA World Player of the Year at the age of 21 in 2009. He scored the highest number of goals in 2005 FIFA World Youth Championship. He was the youngest Argentine player in the FIFA World Cup in 2006.

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