Enzo Fernández’s apology after a racist chant livestream has pushed racism in Argentina back into sharper view. The episode now sits beside newer incidents involving Argentina fans, and it has reopened a harder argument about how football language mirrors the country’s white myth and the erasure of Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities.
The chant at the center of the backlash included the line “QUE VENGAN LOS FRANCESES CON EL DOCUMENTO, QUE JUEGUEN PARA ANGOLA SI LE DAN LOS HUEVOS,” a phrase that loosely translates to “Let the Frenchmen come with their ID/document, let them play for Angola if they’ve got the b*lls.” It targeted the African heritage of players on the French national squad, including Kylian Mbappé, and the same words were heard during the 2022 World Cup Final and echoed by the Argentine football team after its 2024 Copa América victory.
Instagram and the apology
Fernández was seen broadcasting a live stream on Instagram with squad members chanting that song, then later publicly apologised. That sequence matters because the controversy did not stay confined to one crowd in one stadium; it moved through a public stream, into a wider national argument, and back onto the reputation of Argentina’s football success.
Argentina’s football success and national image now sit in direct contrast with repeated racist incidents involving fans and players. That contradiction has become central to the debate because the incidents are not being treated as isolated slips: the same chant has appeared across different football settings, while other episodes have involved Argentine fans, a player, and a political figure.
Buenos Aires and the white myth
The historical backdrop reaches beyond football. In 1778, the Buenos Aires census showed 37 per cent of the city was Afro-descendant, and the source says almost all cities had more than one-third Afro-descendant population in that period. Argentina was a European colony for nearly three centuries and was primarily ruled by the Spanish Empire, then later pursued immigration policy designed to “whiten” the country by recruiting millions of Europeans.
Black soldiers were disproportionately sent to the front lines in the Argentine War of Independence and the Paraguayan War, also called the War of the Triple Alliance. In 1871, a severe yellow fever outbreak and cholera epidemics swept through Buenos Aires. Those events are part of the mechanism the source links to the later shrinking and erasure of Afro-descendant life in Argentina, alongside a national story that overlooks Indigenous communities as well.
France, Brazil and Lisbon
At the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a group of fans were heard chanting a derogatory song about French players, and Argentine fans also told IShowSpeed to “go home” during the Argentina-Egypt fixtures of the Round of 16. IShowSpeed is a US citizen. Brazilians have also faced racial slurs from Argentina fans and were called “monkeys.”
In February 2026, Gianluca Prestianni was accused of racially abusing Vinícius Júnior during a first-leg clash between Real Madrid and Benfica at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon. Gianluca Prestianni denied the allegations and was suspended for one match. Celeste Amarilla added to the controversy by calling Kylian Mbappé a “colonised Cameroonian pretending hard to be French,” saying he had “sucked coconuts,” and saying the most “educated” sounds Mbappé had ever heard were from “chimpanzees.”
For readers following Racism In Argentina, the immediate issue is not a single apology but the pattern around it: chants repeated across matches, a stream that widened the audience, and historical claims that make the incidents harder to dismiss as isolated crowd behavior. The next pressure point is whether Argentina’s football and public figures keep treating these episodes as one-off apologies or confront the older story they keep reviving.
