Argentina National Football Team

Argentina are the reigning FIFA World Cup champions, three-time winners (1978, 1986, 2022), and currently the holders of more total international titles than any other federation in the history of football (23 across senior tournaments) — having added a record 16th Copa América in 2024 and the 2022 Finalissima against Italy at Wembley. The Asociación del Fútbol Argentino was founded in 1893 and the senior team has been one of the two or three most consistently elite international sides across the entire modern era. The 2022 World Cup win in Qatar, with Lionel Messi finally lifting the trophy that had defined his absence from his football otherwise — the 3-3 final draw against France in which Messi scored twice and Mbappé scored a hat-trick, ending 4-2 on penalties — produced the most-watched football match of all time at an estimated 1.5 billion live viewers. The squad of Messi, Ángel Di María, Emiliano Martínez, Julián Álvarez and Cristian Romero defined the cycle, with Messi's seven goals in the tournament including the equaliser in extra time of the final. Lionel Scaloni, who took over in 2018 after Argentina's group-stage exit at the 2018 World Cup and the dismissal of Jorge Sampaoli, has now coached Argentina to the 2021 Copa América, the 2022 World Cup, the 2024 Copa América, the 2025 CONMEBOL qualifying title (Argentina won the cycle by 10 points), and the 2024-25 Finalissima rematch against Italy. Captain Lionel Messi, at 38 in the tournament summer, will play what is widely understood to be his last World Cup. The squad combines Messi with the Inter Miami back-line, Real Madrid striker Julián Álvarez, Atlético's Cristian Romero, and Manchester City's Julián Álvarez.

Diego Maradona's two goals against England at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on 22 June 1986 — the 'Hand of God' in the 51st minute, and the 'Goal of the Century' four minutes later, beating five English defenders in a 60-yard solo run — are the two most-replayed moments in World Cup history. The match, played four years after the Falklands War, sealed Argentina's quarter-final win 2-1. Maradona went on to lead Argentina to the title with the most prolific individual tournament campaign of the modern era. The two goals together represent the moment Maradona's mythology was sealed. Mario Kempes's brace in the 1978 World Cup final against the Netherlands at the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires on 25 June 1978 — scoring after 38 minutes and again in extra time at 105 — sealed Argentina's first World Cup title. The match was played in front of a 71,000-strong home crowd, in an Argentina that was four years into the military dictatorship; Kempes finished as tournament top scorer with six goals. Lionel Messi's brace and extra-time goal against France in the 2022 World Cup final at the Lusail Iconic Stadium on 18 December 2022 — equalising in the 23rd minute, scoring again in the 108th, and converting his penalty in the 4-2 shoot-out — sealed Argentina's third World Cup title after a 3-3 draw. The trophy completed Messi's career major-honour set and is widely considered the most emotionally consequential single trophy lift in football history. The post-match scenes in Buenos Aires drew an estimated four-million-person open-top bus celebration the following morning.