Once again… “African origins” raises widespread controversy about the Argentine national team | sports

The controversy over the racial identity of the Argentine national team has returned to the forefront in conjunction with the 2026 World Cup, after a post spread on the “X” platform claimed that the Argentine national team is the only one among the participating teams that does not include any player of African origin or black skin.

The post gained wide circulation after it was re-published more than two thousand times, and received about 21 thousand likes, exceeding the barrier of two million views, before it was circulated by Spanish-speaking accounts that linked the matter to accusations of racism within Argentine football.

But history and genetics experts assert that this proposal ignores the complexities of Argentine reality and reduces centuries of population and cultural interpenetration into a simplistic and misleading image.

The common claim is based on the assumption that the absence of physical characteristics associated with Africans means the absence of African origins, which specialists categorically reject.

Recent studies in population genetics and biological anthropology indicate that Argentine society is the product of centuries of mixing between indigenous people, European immigrants, and people coming from Africa.

Anthropologist Francisco de Fabio Roca confirmed that the population of Argentina is not a genetically homogeneous group, but rather carries European, Native American, and African components to varying degrees, explaining that trying to deduce ethnic origin based solely on appearance is a scientifically inaccurate approach.

Experts stress that population mixing extending over long generations makes it difficult to directly link genetic origin to phenotypic characteristics.

Scientific figures reveal the nature of Argentine society

A study published in 2025 on the genetic makeup of the population of the Buenos Aires metropolitan area showed that the samples studied included about 84% West Eurasian ancestry, 12.5% ​​indigenous ancestry, and 3.4% sub-Saharan African ancestry.

Research conducted in other areas of the country has also revealed higher proportions of indigenous ancestry, in some cases exceeding the European contribution.

These results confirm that the genetic identity in Argentina is more diverse than the stereotypes circulating on social networking sites reflect.

Maradona is at the center of the debate

In the context of the same controversy, a genealogical study published in 2022 returned to the forefront indicating that the late Argentine football legend Diego Maradona may be descended from one of the enslaved Africans who served in the Andean army during the War of Independence.

Although this study does not definitively resolve Maradona’s origins, it reflects the complexity of Argentina’s demographic history and the impossibility of reducing it to simple racial classifications.

African presence in Argentina

According to the 2022 national census data, about 302,936 people identify themselves as of African or black origin, which represents about 0.7% of the total population.

However, researchers stress that this current percentage does not reflect the historical size of the African presence in the country.

Historian Magdalena Candiotti explains that the percentage of enslaved Africans and their descendants ranged between 8% and 12% of the population of the main cities in the Rio de la Plata region until the beginning of the nineteenth century.

It is also estimated that approximately 200,000 people were transferred from Africa to the region during the colonial era, a number equivalent to approximately half the number of Africans who arrived in the United States in the same period.

Researchers believe that one of the reasons for the spread of this narrative is due to the way Argentine national identity has been built throughout history.

While countries such as Brazil and Mexico relied on highlighting the mixed character of their societies, Argentine official discourse for decades focused on European roots, which contributed to marginalizing or ignoring the contributions of indigenous people and people of African descent.

This was evident in controversial statements made by a number of former presidents, when Argentines were portrayed as children of European immigrants only, which sparked widespread criticism within academic and cultural circles.

Researchers point out that the building of the Argentine state was based on the idea of ​​a unified national identity that transcends previous ethnic and national affiliations, in contrast to other experiences that witnessed long periods of legal apartheid.

But this model, according to specialists, did not prevent the continuation of some forms of discrimination related to origin or skin color, even if they were less clear than other models the world has witnessed.

The controversy surrounding the Argentine national team reveals that reducing identity to skin color or external appearance ignores well-established historical and scientific facts. Genetic research and historical records confirm the presence of an African contribution to the Argentine population, and also confirm that racial mixing extending over centuries makes it difficult to make definitive judgments about the origins of individuals or players based on appearance alone.