I walked into 5,000 wild Argentina fans in an England shirt — the resp | UK | News

The message on the man’s phone read, “Dangerous people have just arrived from Argentina and you need to leave.”

Since the football fan didn’t speak English, he had improvised and used Google Translate to relay the following warning to my colleague and me: England fans not welcome at Argentina fans’ pre-2026 World Cup semi-final party.

Before the national team’s big matches, it is traditional for South American fans to hold a ‘Banderazo’; It’s a pre-game party where they drink beer, have a barbecue, and most importantly, sing and dance with flags.

The venue in Atlanta was an open-air, amphitheater-type shopping complex called The Underground. Thousands of blue-and-white-shirted Argentine fans crowded into the brown-brick bowl, waving Maradona and Messi flags.

The heavy rain had not dampened the spirits, and the crowd was constantly singing along to the rhythm of a group of drummers.

The atmosphere was exciting with constant singing and jumping, as well as choreographed displays of giant flags.

And although complete strangers were more than happy to cling on to the shoulders of complete strangers, it was clear that maybe, as an Englishman, I wasn’t that welcome after all.

Among the photos of Maradona smoking a cigar and Lionel Messi lifting the World Cup were flags claiming ownership of the Falkland Islands, where Britain famously went to war with the South Americans in the 1980s.

Then the song was sung. Many of the crowd’s favorite songs are not too dissimilar to those in Scotland, and we become the butt of the joke. A particular crowd favorite was “He who does not jump is an Englishman.”

But to test the positive pre-match mood and get involved in what looked like some pretty fun dancing, my colleague and I snuck into the crowd wearing a Three Lions jersey tucked under an old Maradona shirt.

It’s fair to say that security for the event was tight. Armed police patrolled the amphitheater’s walkways and viewing points and aggressively shouted at people to “get down” whenever someone stood on the wall.

There was no way we could get into the crowd and get out quickly, so we would have to either rely on the Argentinians being friendly or the police to help us. I wasn’t holding out hope for either, given that the officials seemed pretty grumpy and the fans were pretty rowdy.

When the rain opened up some space in the crowd, we tried our luck and reached the center.

We decided that I should be held up with my replica World Cup trophy, Bobby Moore style, so that all three levels of Argentinians could get a good look at my Three Lions shirt.

As soon as I took off my Maradona shirt, there were gasps from the people around me.

A woman wagged her finger. “No, no,” he called out.

When I was lifted up, her reaction was even more resentful. “You can’t do this,” a bearded man shouted as two teenagers gave me the middle finger.

A shirtless man then joined the bearded man in telling us that we “shouldn’t be doing this.” However, when the crowd noticed us, he pushed my colleague and lifted me into the air, and the crowd started jumping around us.

Most were very good-natured, and although there were plenty of people swearing, many more were smiling and dancing around us.

We started shoving and as is normal when you have a replica mug people tried to snatch it from my hands.

As more people around us joined in the pogo dance, I did my best to join in. But we were being pushed back and the noise level started to increase.

The crowd was singing one of their favorite songs: “He who does not jump is English.” I thought that was a bit of an unfair comment, given that we were in the thick of it and were putting a lot of energy into it.

When we started being told “get out” and “you must get out of here for your safety”, we decided to cut our losses and exit.

I knelt down and crawled under one of the large flags. Just as we were catching our breath, the man carrying the Google Translate message approached my colleague and warned about dangerous people coming from Argentina. So we left.

It was fun, a little touchy, but ultimately a great joke.

Experiencing Banderazo up close was pretty special and being the only England fan in a crowd of passionate Argentina fans was completely unique.