._.

There’s an entire literary genre built around the cosmopolitan who loves the Global South—as long as the Global South loses with elegance and dignity. Ishaan Tharoor has written a masterpiece in that genre.

He makes a list of the World Cup’s "charming countries": the Japanese cleaning the stadium, the kind Koreans, Vozinha, the noble loser. All lovable, endearing, unforgettable. All eliminated.

The truth is that this kind of picturesque admiration comes with conditions. The "other" is worth celebrating only as long as they remain endearing. And more often than not, they’re considered endearing because they lose and pose no threat to power.

Tharoor built his "love" for Argentina around its decline: hyperinflation, chaos, a team supposedly suffering from injustice. That’s an aesthetic relationship with the periphery. The moment the periphery stops being picturesque and starts winning, the toy breaks.

His use of Eduardo Galeano’s quote about Maradona and Napoli makes the point obvious: it celebrates a dark South humiliating the white North that had despised it. Then he uses that same quote to argue that Argentina is now the North. That’s where the unspoken assumption slips in: the South American who "looks" European somehow no longer counts as a victory for the Global South.

Argentina is part of the Global South whether he likes it or not. That isn’t something he gets to decide based on whether he finds the country sympathetic. On top of that, he argues that Argentina has become part of the establishment because Milei was supposedly going to be sitting next to Trump in the stands (which now doesn't even appear to be true). It’s exactly the opposite.

An Argentine invited to a stadium in New Jersey, sitting beside the people who hold power, is about as peripheral a scene as you can imagine.

Mistaking proximity for power is a basic analytical error. We were never less sovereign than when we were at our friendliest with those in power. The embrace is submission without friction—a surrender. The problem isn't that Argentina somehow became "bad." The reality is much simpler: Tharoor liked an Argentina that lost.

Detail of A Fine Tsuishu Carved Red Lacquer Kogo Incense Box.

It's ultimately idiotic to whine over how many red cards were awarded in a match a or *squints eyes* whether Bellingham suffered from homophobia I guess??? When this is the picture that went around the world. This was the cover of multiple journals, it was plastered all over social media just yesterday. This scares Milei, scares the British government, scares FIFA, and it scares all fascists. I don't think we're appreciating it enough.

This visibilizes a cause we've been seeking justice over for the last 44 years while the world undermined it. This is one step towards making everyone aware of the dark bits of history that everyone is ignorant to. It's not just Malvinas. It's the U.S. backed military dictatorship that sent all those hungry teenagers to fight trained soldiers. It's the mourning that surrounds us every day. It's what makes us relentless and hungry for the fight. Both on and off the pitch.

I don't think we appreciate enough just how revolutionary the consequences of this will be.

This is what happens when famous people use a massive, international platform to speak out against injustice in the world.

FIFA, England, Trump, Javier Milei: the world is watching. And what they've seen cannot be unseen. And what they read cannot be unread. And this picture will live in the history books and the minds of football fans for ages.

this behavior is nothing new. the global south and everything in it - the people, the culture, our heritage - is seen as nothing more than a decoration or commodity to colonizers. i don't even need to bring up the koh i noor or the entire british museum; these examples are recent and egregious enough on their own.