‘We won the World Cup!’: Collective Identity Among Argentinians Commenting Online

Argentinians possess a collective (broadly national) offline identity, part of which is tightly linked to football and their national team’s achievements (see McGlashan, Discourse & Society, 31:307–328, 2020, among others). This chapter addresses the extent to which that identity is at work among Argentinian users commenting online news about the 2022 World Cup final, which was won by Argentina. Several articles from the online website of the newspaper La Nación were collected around the days of the Cup final (December 18, 2022) and the comments they triggered were analysed in search for signals or traces of a collective Argentinian identity. Specifically, in the chapter a basic research hypothesis is put forward regarding the national team as an extension of the Argentinian community, subsequently developed into several research questions related to collective Argentinian identity, specifically concerning (a) the political appropriation of football achievements; (b) the country’s achievements at the Cup final as an extension of the country as a whole; (c) references to Maradona and Messi as symbols of collective (national) identity; and (d) the emphasis on assumed background assumptions among Argentinians.