If you know the history, it becomes a little easier to understand what lies behind the loud, defiant chants of “Argentina! Argentina! Argentina!” that form part of the soundtrack for every Manchester United game.
It is the song that acclaims Lisandro Martinez now the Argentina international has started to establish himself, and it could be heard again last week when Alejandro Garnacho fired in the goal that gave Erik ten Hag’s team a 1-0 win against Real Sociedad in the Europa League.
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But this is not just something that started with modern-day United and it would be wrong to think it is simply a celebration of the Argentinian footballers, past and present, who have pulled on that famous red shirt.
The same song has been part of the repertoire at Old Trafford for many years and, contrary to popular belief, it did not start with the signings of Juan Sebastian Veron in 2001 or Carlos Tevez six years later. In fact, it has been this way for almost a quarter of a century.
Argentinian flags have fluttered in the stands at Old Trafford even when there was nobody of that nationality in the team. The souvenir stalls on Sir Matt Busby Way have stocked up with merchandise showing that familiar triband of light blue and white. Some have an image of the sun in the middle (Bandera Oficial de Ceremonia). Others just have the three horizontal stripes (Bandera de Ornato). All have the same meaning, in this context, as part of a wider story that defines United’s own identity. It has been this way for so long it is now firmly embedded in the fans’ culture.
All of which requires a bit of explanation when a lot of the Argentinian players who have been serenaded this way — Tevez, Veron, Angel Di Maria, Gabriel Heinze — are remembered by United supporters for the wrong reasons.
Tevez will never be forgiven at Old Trafford for choosing to leave the club for Manchester City and helping to change the landscape of English football in favour of United’s neighbours. Heinze was accused of committing his own act of treachery, or at least trying to, when he took United to a Premier League tribunal to try to force a transfer to Liverpool. Di Maria had a bottle chucked at him on his last visit to Old Trafford with PSG. Veron is remembered, on the whole, as an elegant frustration.
Still, though, the Argentina chants are heard. It is no wonder sometimes that opposition fans, or maybe even some of United’s younger generation, can find it difficult to understand where it all comes from.
It is the 95th minute at Stamford Bridge. United are losing 1-0 to Chelsea and it has reached the point — the last frenzied, desperate moments — when the home crowd are screeching and imploring and whistling for the referee to blow the final whistle.
One final cross is swung into the penalty area. It is Casemiro with the header, looping up, then down, against the post and away from the goalkeeper’s flailing arms. And then there is the pandemonium that only a decisive last-minute goal can conjure up. Martinez is in the thick of it, directly in front of the away end, and there is a fan clambering over the netting at the front to meet him, eye to eye. Two men with different stories bonded by football euphoria.
Martinez posted a photograph of it on his social media accounts after the game.
Mate I don’t know you but we’re in this together… 😅🤜🏻🤛🏻🔴 fighting until the end!!!!! #MUFC https://t.co/SIfxCBuQPP pic.twitter.com/I6GeaRCuw2
— Lisandro Martinez (@LisandrMartinez) October 22, 2022
These are the moments that make it easier to understand why United’s supporters have been so quick to embrace a player who began his career with Newell’s Old Boys, in Rosario, Santa Fe, and will almost certainly be part of Argentina’s squad for the World Cup.
A huge banner was made recently of the Argentina flag, to be displayed inside Old Trafford, in honour of a player who was nicknamed ‘The Butcher’ at his previous club, Ajax. It wasn’t allowed entry because the design also featured a butcher’s cleaver. Martinez, however, saw the pictures and was grateful for the support. He says he is “surprised” to hear an English crowd sing so volubly and favourably about his own country.
Licha's new banner.🔴🤩#mufc pic.twitter.com/YM8WncLWN0
— Everything Martinez. (@EverythingLicha) October 30, 2022
Garnacho no doubt felt the same when United won the FA Youth Cup final in May and the crowd picked out his national team for their victory songs. Marcos Rojo was once serenaded this way. Sergio Romero, too, during his days as understudy to goalkeeper David de Gea.
What these players might not understand fully, perhaps, is the history behind it and the mindset — because the two are directly linked — that meant United supporters used to take a 30ft-long banner to away matches to emphasise the point. That banner had the simple message: “United > England” and there were plenty of anti-England songs to back it up.
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Anti-England songs? Already, it is tempting to think there will be followers of other clubs who cannot understand why any set of supporters from a Premier League club would take such a stance. Many opposing fans do not want to listen to the rationale. The songs about Argentina work them into a froth of indignation. Which, funnily enough, is exactly the kind of reaction the songs are meant to incur.
A part of it goes back to the mindset of United supporters — swagger, braggadocio, arrogance, call it what you will — during the years when Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager who won 13 Premier League titles at Old Trafford, made it no secret that he viewed the England team, and the Football Association, through suspicious eyes.
“They (United fans) have such a sense of pride in their club, they see it as something special, something apart, a regional beacon at odds with the rest of the nation,” Jim White wrote in his 2008 book, Manchester United The Biography. “Hence the antipathy of some United fans to England. That is why they chant ‘Argentina’ with such relish whenever Carlos Tevez scores, or take delight in singing about Ronaldo making England ‘look s****’. For them, it is Manchester against the world.”
Yet there are other reasons to explain why the United songbook seems to be designed to get under the skin of anyone who follows the England team.
To be specific, the first time “Argentina” was sung by United’s travelling fans came directly after the 1998 World Cup in a match at West Ham that will always be remembered for the vilification of David Beckham rather than anything that happened on the pitch.
Beckham had been demonised for the little kick at Diego Simeone that resulted in him being sent off against Argentina. England went out of the tournament and Beckham returned to a national festival of scapegoating. An effigy of the United player had been hung outside a south London pub. The Daily Mirror printed his face superimposed on a dartboard. And to compound it all, the fixture list had given Ferguson’s team a trip to West Ham, a club with a fervent England following, as their first away assignment.
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“Our number seven had become public enemy number one,” says Nicky Welsh, another product of United’s youth academy. “We drew 0-0 that day and Beckham was magnificent. The abuse he received was off the scale, vile and sick, but that boy just rose above it. I was later told the other United players were booing him in the tunnel beforehand, trying to relieve a bit of the tension.”
Welsh speaks from the perspective of an ex-pro who was on United’s books in the 1980s and has written his own book, My United Road, about his experiences of following the club home and away.
He also used to travel abroad with England and can remember being joined by many other United supporters. Over time, however, the numbers started to drop off. Welsh understands the divisions more than most because he has seen, close up, the hardening of attitudes and changing relationships.
“The 1990s coincided with United’s glory years,” he explains. “There were times when supporting United meant you could be targeted by other fans at England matches.
“Then there were the songs that were heard regularly at England matches during that period. One was, ‘Stand up if you hate Man U’ even if Gary and Phil Neville, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes were on the pitch.
“Another was, ‘If the Nevilles play for England, so can I’. There were quite a few of these songs. The young United lads started getting booed and suffering all sorts of abuse. It was shocking to see how much stick they would get on international duty.”
On the 50th anniversary of the Munich air tragedy, the FA was so mindful of the anti-United culture it was decided there ought to be a minute’s applause in memory of the 23 who died, rather than the traditional minute’s silence. The FA, to put it bluntly, did not trust England’s supporters to honour a silence.
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“In the end, the abuse got so bad a lot of United fans turned their backs on the national team,” says Welsh. “It became a case of, ‘Who needs England?’. And with the England supporters singing ‘No Surrender’ and the ‘10 German Bombers’ – as if they were somehow representing their country at bloody war — it was obvious there was one team in particular that the Little Englanders would hate United fans supporting. That team was… Argentina.”
It hasn’t always been straightforward when it comes to the seven players from Argentina who have represented United. Some of those players are now reviled. Others left the club in difficult circumstances.
Ferguson once told Manchester’s football writers that he preferred working with Brazilian players because his experiences with Argentinians made him think they were troublesome and too easily led by their agents.
“I confess I found working with Argentinian footballers quite difficult,” Ferguson wrote in his last autobiography. “There was deep patriotism towards Argentina. They always had the flag around them. I had no problem with that, but the ones I managed didn’t try particularly hard to speak English. With Veron, it was just, ‘Mister’.”
Tevez understood the language well enough to pose with an ‘RIP Fergie’ sign after helping City win their first Premier League title (Ferguson, you may recall, had said City would never be champions in his lifetime). Veron lost form and tangled with Roy Keane in training. Heinze also had a bit of spite about him.
Supporters who had been brought up on nostalgic stories of United’s bruising encounter against Estudiantes in the 1968 Intercontinental Cup loved the combative streak that helped Heinze win the award as United’s 2004-05 player of the season. So did Ferguson, who described the left-back as a “warrior” — until, that is, Heinze hired Liverpool’s solicitors in a bid to become the first player to leave Old Trafford for Anfield since Phil Chisnall in 1964.
United, operating on Ferguson’s instructions, blocked the deal and Heinze has since acknowledged that he misunderstood the depth of Mancunian-Liverpudlian rivalry. “Fergie got that one 100 per cent right,” says Welsh. “The real Reds know you don’t go from United to either Liverpool or City.”
Happily for United, it turns out that Martinez speaks good English and perhaps understands the importance of communication better than some of the Argentinians who have preceded him.
“Martinez reminds me of a ‘hunting dogs’ theme that I used in the past from a David Attenborough nature film,” says Paul McGuinness, the former United coach. “The first time I used it was before the FA Youth Cup semi-final against Arsenal in 1997. It’s about togetherness.
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“There was a clip that showed why the hunting dogs were the most successful predators on the African plains. The hunting dog isn’t the biggest predator. Yet 80 per cent of their hunts end in kills because they know how to work in teams and have that hunger inside them. Martinez is like that as a defender. A lot of South Americans have those qualities.”
It is a fitting analogy at a time when Martinez’s popularity can be measured, in part, by the way the volume has gone up at United’s recent home matches.
“Some people looked too deeply into it when we started singing ‘Argentina’ at matches,” says Pete Boyle, a United regular who has played a considerable part in shaping their fan culture. “Some thought it was disrespectful because of the Falklands War. But that was never part of the reason for singing it. We would have done the same if it was Sweden, Bulgaria, anywhere.
“It wasn’t about politics. It was about getting a rise from the supporters of small clubs who used to get really upset that we didn’t care about the England team.”
Boyle is a well-known figure at Old Trafford and is credited with coming up with some of the crowd’s most famous songs. He was at the West Ham game in 1998 with a banner that showed an Argentinian flag and a balaclava. The message read “Buenos Aires Reds” and he remembers it causing so much outrage inside the ground it was discussed on radio phone-ins afterwards.
The tone was set. Another flag read “Are you watching Eng-er-lund?”. Attitudes hardened again when Phil Neville was scapegoated for England’s exit from Euro 2000. United fans started to sing about being world champions twice (“once more than England”) and “You can stick your f****** England up your a***.” Opposition supporters seethed. And on it went.
“I have spoken to Argentinian visitors to Old Trafford and they were both bemused by it and loved it,” says Barney Chiltern, editor of United fanzine Red News. “It’s not a political sentiment and there were a few Reds who hated it, but we were protective of our players after the pantomime-villain treatment for Beckham and Phil Neville and a ‘Republik of Mancunia’ feeling developed; us against the world and all that.”
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Not everyone will get it. And, yes, there are plenty of United fans who still follow England and will be hoping Gareth Southgate’s team do well in the World Cup. But there are also large numbers who no longer identify with the national team. It is one of the few things the supporters of United and Liverpool have in common.
It has been this way at Old Trafford for nearly 25 years and, to go even further back, it is fair to say the culture at Old Trafford is markedly different to what it used to be. In December 1983, Ossie Ardiles had returned to Tottenham Hotspur, having spent a year on loan at Paris Saint-Germain while it was deemed too sensitive for an Argentinian to be playing in England during the Falklands war. Ardiles made his comeback at Old Trafford and the footage is still online of the moment when he entered the pitch as a substitute. He was booed viciously by the home crowd.
(Top photo design: Eamonn Dalton)
