The World Cup WAS Rigged for Argentina’s “Zionist” Thugs – But they lost anyway.
Wed 7:44 am +00:00, 22 Jul 2026
Source: https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/the-world-cup-was-rigged-for-argentinas-zionist-thugs/
Like most Americans, I don’t know much about soccer. I never much cared, either…until Morocco made its amazing World Cup run in 2022, their supporters waved Palestinian flags, and I got sucked into the spectacle.
I do know a fair bit about conspiracy theories. I studied the JFK assassination in my mid-teens, circa the mid-1970s, and noticed the grotesque disjuncture between reality and official discourse. Since then, I’ve been fully aware that a surprisingly high percentage of the best-known conspiracy theories are true, or at least well-founded. When I tried to research and discuss 9/11 rationally and factually while teaching at the University of Wisconsin in 2006, I was witch-hunted out of the academy, which left me plenty of time to look into alleged conspiracies and try to figure out which ones were reality-based.
Living in Morocco, where everyone follows the World Cup, I’ve heard plenty of FIFA-related conspiracy theories. This year’s biggest soccer conspiracy theory was the claim that the World Cup was rigged in favor of Argentina’s thuggish and mostly-mediocre players with their aging prima donna star Lionel Messi.
When I first heard it from Moroccan guys at the café I was skeptical. Global soccer fans, even more than American sports fans, always seem to think the referees are unfair.
Then I sat in another Moroccan café watching the second half the Argentina-Egypt game. In the 59th minute, Egypt scored to make it 3-0. Game over! But wait…FIFA officials intervened, ordering the ref to look at pre-score footage to find a “foul” to disallow the goal. The refs obliged, finding an obscure, irrelevant and dubious infraction in the far reaches of the other side of the field, allowing them to cancel the goal and keep the game within Argentina’s reach.
Shortly thereafter, Argentina committed a blatant foul in the box, right by the goal they were attacking, taking down a defender and allowing them to score a goal. The referees ignored the foul and let the goal stand, making it 2-1 in favor of Egypt.
Suddenly, instead of enjoying a three-point advantage, as it would have under honest refereeing, Egypt was only one point ahead. That allowed Argentina to mount an “amazing comeback” and win.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the entire match, Argentina’s notoriously brutish players got away with foul after foul. On the occasions their fouls were called, generally extreme cases, they never got yellow cards. Argentina was called for 13 fouls (actual number much greater) and didn’t get a single yellow card. Egypt was called for basically all of its ten fouls, which were generally less extreme than Argentina’s, and received four yellow cards!
Egypt’s coach Hossam Hassan was understandably outraged. He said his team was cheated out of victory, announced the World Cup was rigged, and said he would not even bother watching any more of the games.
After viewing the game live, and later checking video re-runs of its key moments, I became a soccer conspiracy theorist. The theory that Argentina benefitted from preferential treatment by the referees and the FIFA executives they worked for made perfect sense and was well-supported by video evidence.
Here is a relatively neutral video explaining the context. It helps you understand WHY FIFA didn’t want to let Egypt eliminate Messi and Argentina.
And the Egypt game was just the most extreme case. Argentina’s team benefitted from official favoritism at every step along the way. But why? As the above video explains, Lionel Messi is the game’s biggest star, and this was his last dance. The earlier his team was eliminated, the more anticlimactic (and unprofitable) for FIFA. Having Messi in the finals was very good from a PR and advertising dollars perspective.
And then there is the Zionism angle. Messi is often accused of being pro-Israel. While search engines and AI deny that he has made explicitly pro-Israel statements, Gemini tells us:”
Messi’s associations with Israel include:
Corporate Partnerships: He has served as a brand ambassador for Israeli companies, such as the Jerusalem-based visual aid developer OrCam.
Visits and Matches: He visited Israel multiple times for both leisure and with his former club, FC Barcelona, including a 2019 Argentina national team friendly in Tel Aviv that went ahead despite calls for a boycott.
National Context: His international career has occasionally intersected with the broader political climate. For instance, he drew attention at the 2026 World Cup when Argentina’s political shifts under President Javier Milei—a staunch supporter of Israel—put his team’s matches under a political microscope.
Sunday’s World Cup finals, which Argentina lost to Spain, were viewed through the Zionism prism due to the diametrically opposed policies of the two nations’ governments. Milei is the world’s most notorious Zionist extremist head of state (not counting Netanyahu) while Spain’s Pedro Sanchez is the Western world’s most outspoken pro-Palestine, anti-genocide Prime Minister. And Spain has recalled its ambassador, blocked shipments to Israel, and pushed the EU to break off relations.
What’s more, Argentina plays Zionist-style soccer: thuggish, not outstandingly talented (with the notable exception of Messi), and specializing in the classic “they cry out as they strike you” victimizer-posing-as-victim schtick. Like Israel and the Jewish tribe in general, they want everything rigged in their favor…and usually get it, thanks to the power of big media and big money. (Messi apparently thinks Yahweh gave him the World Cup 3,000 years ago, so he can ignore everyone else’s rights and just steal it.)
Does Argentina’s Loss to Spain Disprove the “Rigging” Conspiracy Theory?
So does the outcome of the World Cup championship game—Spain’s 1-to-0 victory—disprove the “rigged for Argentina” conspiracy theory? Not really. The game was not nearly as close as the final score. Spain totally dominated, showing that Argentina didn’t belong in the championship game. (They lost massively to Egypt, after all, and were only saved by crooked refs.)
In the final, Spain enjoyed 67% possession and racked up 20 shots including 12 on target, while Argentina had a mere three shots with exactly zero on target. Spain connected on 730 passes, Argentina 349. All-in-all, it was a total blowout, and the final score should have been a bigger victory than 1-0.
As in the Egypt game, referee in the finals saved Argentina’s hopes, for a few minutes at least, by disallowing a perfectly good goal. Spain’s Nico Williams scored in the 96th minute, but it was disallowed due to some incidental, accidental foot contact.
As the above video shows, Argentina got away with numerous fouls, including some egregious ones, and were only rarely and reluctantly penalized. Had they not been allowed to repeatedly mug the Spanish players, the final score might have been 10-0 rather than 1-0. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get my drift. Check out some of the social media reactions posted at Celia Farber’s Substack article.
If you need official validation that the “rigged for Argentina” conspiracy theory is true, and that the Argentines are a bunch of Zionist-style cheating thugs, check out the New York Times piece:
The Times piece focuses on the Argentines’ cartoonishly villainous lack of sportsmanship: After being totally outclassed throughout the game, they refused to congratulate the winners, as is customary, but instead attacked them, triggering a street brawl in the middle of the field.
The Times also admitted that the rigging-the-game-on-behalf-of-untalented-thugs conspiracy theory is true:
Spain center back Aymeric Laporte made clear prior to the game that they knew what was in store. “In the last few matches we’ve seen things that really surprised us, incidents that were ignored,” he told reporters. “Especially with Argentina, who are a team that leave a lot of little messages with their challenges.”
Laporte’s diagnosis was correct. Referees have exhibited leniency towards Argentina players in this tournament, and it happened again today.
So even America’s Jewspaper of record has signed off on this one.
When I heard it in the Moroccan cafés, I wasn’t sure what to think. When I saw it with my own eyes in the Argentina-Egypt game, I became a believer.
But now that the New York Times has confirmed what I saw with my own eyes, it’s not even a conspiracy theory any more.
I wonder if they’ll ever do that with 9/11.
