Oops – UK Ambassador Offends Argentinians by Tweeting Chilean Football Chant

Chile v Argentina is a fiercely contested local derby.

The Argentinians may consider Brazil their main football rivals. They have won seven World Cups between them. Their games are usually high profile and are often referred to as the Clásico Sudamericano.

Argentina also borders four other nations, all Spanish speaking but none bar Uruguay have reached their level of prominence in world football.

The land of Messi and Maradona also has a long standing football and political rivalry with England which dates back to the 1966 World Cup where England manager Sir Alf Ramsey dubbed their players animals and prevented his side swapping shirts with their opponents.

That rivalry stayed low key and subsumed to England’s other rivalries, notably with Germany and the oldest one with Scotland, until the 1980s. In that decade, the annual traditional England v Scotland game was stopped and the English began to look elsewhere for rivals.

The 1980s provided a ready made villain for them. The Falklands War in 1982 followed by the ‘Hand of God’ incident in the 1986 World Cup catapulted the rivalry between England and Argentina, into the Top 3 of both nations despite the infrequency of their meetings.

Back in South America, the lean strip nation of Chile shares small highland borders with Peru and Bolivia but the vast majority of its 2,880 mile long border is with Argentina.

That makes Argentina Chile’s rivals. Chile along with the big three of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay is one of the four founding member nations of CONMEBOL.

Last week Chile entertained Argentina in an eagerly awaited fixture in Santiago as part of qualification for the Brazil World Cup, a tournament both sides are understandably very keen to play in.

Into that tension stepped the British ambassador to Chile Mr Jon Benjamin. Twitter is not a tool of communication you would necessarily associate with the diplomatic community. Undeterred by the niceties, Benjamin tweeted out a question; one which is conveniently answered by a Chilean football chant aimed at their neighbours.

The chant gives a historical analysis of the Falklands War explaining that Argentina lost the war due to being a combination of homosexuals, cowards and indelibly lazy.

“Which islands did they take off you and for being what? Perhaps I’ll discover the answer at the National Stadium on Tuesday? I’ve already got my ticket,” inquired the British Ambassador’s tweet of his over 10,000 followers.

Benjamin is far from a homophobe and has a reputation for defending gay rights in Chile as far as a foreign ambassador can influence such things.The rainbow flag of gay rights flies along with the Union Flag at his embassy’s flagpole.

The Argentines were not amused and the British were duly embarrassed.

The Argentine sports daily Ole said there was no excuse and the Argentinian Ambassador to Chile Ginés González claimed the British were nervous about Chileans’ support for their claim to the Falkland Islands.

“Our ambassador to Chile appears to have inadvertently caused some controversy in a tweet. He has deleted it,” a Foreign Office spokesperson told the BBC.

An apologetic Benjamin claimed it was intended as a private message which inadvertently became a public tweet via SMS adding:

“I have great affection for my Argentine friends and respect for their national team.” 

Argentina won the match 2-1.

It wasn’t the only diplomatic faux pas in South American football this week.

The Venezuelan FA mistakenly played the Mexican national anthem as the Ecuadorean team expectantly stood to attention for theirs.

It caused some confusion as you can see below.