A petition dubbed "Argentina Out" has become one of the biggest internet phenomena in recent weeks, and so far, no one officially knows who is behind it.
What the petition demands
Hosted on the website argentinaout.com, the campaign demands the exclusion of the Argentine national team from upcoming editions of the World Cup. The text accompanying the initiative accuses FIFA and the refereeing teams of having favored Argentina and Lionel Messi throughout the tournament in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
How the mobilization grew
The petition was born shortly after the round of 16, when Argentina staged a dramatic comeback against Egypt, overturning a 0-2 deficit with three goals in the final minutes of the match — a result that was surrounded by questions regarding referee decisions. From then on, the petition only gained strength: it surpassed 10 million signatures during the semifinal against England, when the display of a banner claiming the Malvinas Islands as Argentine territory generated even more international outrage, and skyrocketed after the final, which they lost to Spain 1-0 in extra time.
In total, the campaign gathered 23,316,108 signatures from people in approximately 170 countries in less than a week, falling just over 1 million signatures short of the Guinness World Record, currently held by the Jubilee 2000 movement, which collected 24,319,181 endorsements in 1997 in defense of debt relief for the poorest countries.
Who is behind the website
And this is where the mystery lies: despite the scale of the mobilization, the petition's authorship remains anonymous. The domain argentinaout.com was registered with privacy protection, a legal and common feature, but one also often used by fraudulent sites to hide the owners' identities. No organization, fan group, or collective has publicly claimed responsibility for creating the campaign, and copies of the website, including versions with similar names, have already appeared online attempting to ride the wave of traffic.
Does the petition have any real effect?
No. Despite the historic volume of signatures, FIFA does not use popular petitions as a criterion for applying sanctions or excluding national teams from tournaments. Football's governing body is the only one with the power to decide on a national team's participation in official competitions, and there is no indication that Argentina faces any real risk of being excluded from the next World Cup due to the mobilization.
It is worth noting, however, that FIFA, independently of the petition, opened a disciplinary proceeding to investigate the commotion recorded among players immediately after Argentina's loss in the final, involving names such as Nahuel Molina, Leandro Paredes, Thiago Almada, and assistant coach Roberto Ayala.
Not the first controversy of its kind
Digital mobilizations against national teams or results have become common in major tournaments. Even during this World Cup, Argentine and French fans created smaller petitions questioning specific refereeing decisions — none of which have had any official validity to date.