How France and Argentina became sport’s most bitter enemies

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In the same month, the French rugby team visited Argentina in what became a scandal-filled tour that only exacerbated tensions after Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou were alleged to have raped and beaten a woman after meeting her in a nightclub in Mendoza.

The pair were placed under house arrest before being allowed to travel to the French embassy in Buenos Aires. They were allowed to return to France at the start of September but the charges against them – which they deny – remain.

On Friday night, the embittered sides will meet once again on that same Stade de France turf on which Argentina received a hostile sevens welcome. Los Pumas arrive in Paris on the back of a thumping victory over Italy and a narrow loss to Ireland, but even the most optimistic of Argentines will be expecting the hospitality received in both Rome and Dublin not to replicated this weekend.

Not that this has anything to do with Argentina’s rugby team, who will find themselves as punch bags for some of their football counterparts’ deplorable behaviour. It all began in the 2022 football World Cup final, in which Argentina beat France on penalties after a thrilling match. The eventual winners had already made a name for themselves that tournament for their unsporting behaviour – after their quarter-final victory over the Netherlands, also on penalties, they celebrated in the faces of the losing side – but in the final Argentina’s fans took their side’s badboy persona to a new level, chanting a song which was described as both homophobic and racist.

After that match in December 2022, footage emerged from the Argentina dressing room of the players teeing up a song with “a minute’s silence for” followed by goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez shouting “for Mbappé who is dead”. Kylian Mbappé had scored a hat-trick as the final finished 3-3 after normal time.

Back in Argentina, with celebrations ramping up, Martinez held a toy baby with Mbappe’s face on – although the Aston Villa goalkeeper later denied deliberately mocking the Frenchman – during an open-top bus parade, while fans set alight a coffin lid which had been adorned with a picture of the forward.

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How France and Argentina became sport’s most bitter enemies

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