'Ugly start to the Paris Olympics': Argentina's fans unleash racist attack on Morocco's Atlas Lions after defeat

Argentinian football fans unleashed a flood of racist and xenophobic attacks on Morocco's football team across social media platforms following a dramatic and 'chaotic' clash during an opening game at the Paris Olympics, in which the Moroccan 'Atlas Lions' came out victorious.

On Wednesday, 24 July, the Moroccan team took on two-time gold medallists Argentina in the opening match of men's football at the Paris Olympics.

The game in Saint-Etienne halted for nearly two hours when enraged Moroccan fans stormed the pitch and hurled bottles from the stands, in protest of a controversial late goal by Argentina's Cristian Medina in the 16th minute of added time which would have tied the game.

As the crowd was cleared from the stadium, the players stayed behind and returned to an empty pitch for the final three minutes of added time.

Moments before play resumed, Medina's goal was ruled out by VAR for offside, allowing Morocco to hold on for a historic win.

While Moroccan fans celebrated outside the stadium in the 2-1 win, Argentine supporters took to social media to vent their frustration over the two-hour delay that "disrupted" their team's momentum.

Some chose to direct their anger towards Achraf Hakimi, the Atlas Lions' star and Paris Saint-Germain defender, posting racist slurs and monkey emojis under his Instagram posts.

"Argentina fans are so racist, and their players too," commented one Moroccan supporter in defence of the North African nation's sports star.

During the match, Argentina faced boos from certain sections of the crowd, seemingly in response to footage of their players singing a 'racist' chant that emerged after Argentina's Copa América victory. The Argentinian chant included derogatory references to French players of African descent.

The pattern of racist behaviour from Argentine fans is common.

Scenes of Argentine supporters making monkey gestures towards Brazilian opponents have become a routine in several competitions.

While some fans argue that football is a rough-and-tumble game where all banter is fair and sensitivity has no place, others dig deeper into the racism displayed by Argentinian fans and players, tracing it back to the country’s troubled history with Blackness.

Argentina has been home to Black people for centuries, including enslaved people, their descendants, and immigrants. Leaders like Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, former president of Argentina (1868-1874), equated modernity with whiteness, viewing Europe as the pinnacle of civilisation and progress.

They believed that to join the ranks of Germany, France and England, Argentina had to displace its Black population — both physically and culturally. This ideology has seeped into popular culture and football chants.

Overall, it was an ugly start to the Paris Olympics, marked by racism, violence and organisational disaster as fans swarmed the field in a "never-before-seen circus," in the words of coach Javier Mascherano.

Morocco's national team will face Ukraine in their second match this Saturday and will go up against Iraq in the third and final group stage round on Tuesday, 30 July.