ABSTRACT
From its early days soccer in Argentina has provided a strong forum for the representation of nationality. A series of international successes, and a catalogue of 'heroes', germinated an epic narrative, in which soccer contributed, in an important way, to the 'invention of a nation'. Starting from the populist experience of early Peronism in the 1940s, the relationship between soccer (sport) and nationality intensified, with a visible climax in the 1980s and 1990s, through the 'Maradona saga'. Today, the globalization of the soccer stage coincides with a crisis or fracture in the representation of nationality through the Argentinian game. Yet, at the same time, there has been in the daily agenda of the Argentinian public an infinite expansion of soccer that crosses gender and classes. Soccer therefore appears to be the only medium capable of developing epic nationalism in times of conservative neopopulism; yet soccer seems unable to produce it. Our analysis centres on this tension within the Argentinian game.
