Are Argentina fans getting way too annoying this season?

There are regular football fans. There are seasonal football fans. There are year-round obsessive football fans. And then there are Argentina fans after Qatar 2022, who have evolved into something that football sociology has yet to adequately explain.

For thirty-six years, they suffered. They endured heartbreak. They endured finals losses. They endured Germany. Mostly, they endured Germany!

We listened. We sympathised. We respected their pain. Some of us even defended them during difficult times, only to come back to our desks at the office and find 7Up bottles waiting right below our devotedly hung Brazil flag!

Yes, it hits exactly where it hurts. 2014! We didn’t forget Germany either. However, the difference is that they are now making sure we never do.

And that’s really the problem with Argentina fans after Qatar 2022. They didn’t just win the World Cup; they seem to have taken it as a long-term personality upgrade. It’s everywhere now. Subtle at first. Then not so subtle.

After the bottle incident, I thought it was fine, and I would let it go. Move on. Pretend it never happened. But then another colleague went further. He dared to ask me how many days there are in a week.

Again…seven!

The most annoying part is that these fans spent decades demanding empathy. But now, when their time came, they appear as emotionless monsters — connecting everything back to 7.

And it gets even more annoying when these fans attempt to connect every conversation, every argument, every completely unrelated topic back to Messi as if he is both the answer and the question.

You can be discussing office budgets. They will mention Messi. You can be discussing weather patterns. They will mention Messi. You can be discussing municipal drainage systems. Someone will somehow explain how even this proves Messi is the greatest footballer of all time.

At this point, I am convinced that if aliens landed in Bangladesh tomorrow, at least three Argentina fans would immediately ask them whether their civilisation knows Messi. And if they were only mentioning Messi, I wouldn’t even be here writing this rant.

But I am. Because the issue is not just Messi. It never was. It is the way Neymar gets dragged into it like a mandatory supporting character in an argument he never signed up for.

As if every appreciation of Messi must come with a footnote, and that footnote must include at least one unnecessary comparison, one exaggerated dismissal, and one completely unprovoked emotional escalation about Neymar’s existence.

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So, at this point, staying quiet is no longer an option. It would question my loyalty to Brazil. Even though I am a seasonal fan, my loyalty is no less than that of a year-round supporter. If anything, I would say it is more intense, since it accumulates over four years.

I am here to remind Argentina fans of a few things they seem to treat like corrupted files in football memory! 2006. 2010. 2014. Three consecutive World Cups. A trilogy so successful that Germany probably should have considered releasing it as a documentary franchise.

And while we’re discussing historical events, there is also the small matter of Diego Maradona’s famous handball against England in 1986. However, Argentina fans will passionately explain that it was actually a complex philosophical statement on geopolitics, destiny, and divine intervention.

At this point, Brazil has somehow been cast into the role of the supportive older brother in all of this. The one who does not even need to argue loudly, just sighs, passes the ball, and lets history do the talking.

But Argentina fans after 2022 have started behaving like that one spoiled younger brother who finally got the bike he had been begging for years.

The problem is not the bike. It’s the way he now insists on revving it in front of everyone who ever walked him to school. Every conversation becomes a demonstration. Every silence becomes an invitation. Every unrelated topic somehow ends with “but Messi…”

At the end, we cannot help but request them to grow up a little and learn to properly handle the bike they fought so long to get. Instead of riding it into every conversation like a tormenting broadcast channel that refuses to respect signal boundaries, volume control, or just the basic conversational consent.