Stealing the World Cup: the plan of Argentine fans in a new television series

By Lucila Sigal

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 10 (Reuters) – A funny fiction series brings to the screen one of the worst nightmares for Argentine soccer fans: that the national team is disqualified for the next World Cup.

“Robo Mundial”, a comedy that premiered Wednesday on Star+, tells the story of Lucho Buenaventura, who after investing all his savings to travel with his son to the World Cup, sees how the Argentine soccer team is disqualified due to a sanction in the qualifiers against Brazil, its classic rival, and is replaced by the Chilean team.

The news generates a wave of discouragement in the country and leads Buenaventura to gather his coworkers, a group of antiheroes who are one step away from losing their jobs because the online television sales company where they work is about to go bankrupt. to take justice into their own hands.

His plan is to steal the World Cup on his promotional tour of Argentina to try to reincorporate the team, save the illusion of his 11-year-old son -who has just lost his mother-, and the honor of the country, where football is a passion.

“The idea that Argentina is disqualified from the World Cup is an uchrony, in this case, that nobody wants to live,” Joaquín Furriel, the 48-year-old actor who plays Buenaventura in the six-episode series, told Reuters via Zoom.

“In that the director Gabriel (Nicoli) puts all the fears that we fans have and from fear and desperation starts this absurd epic of these characters trying to get Argentina to finally play the World Cup no matter what,” he added.

The idea of ​​fiction seems crazy but in reality the World Cup was stolen twice: the first before the 1966 World Cup during an exhibition in London and the second in 1983 at the Brazilian Football Confederation.

In the series, Buenaventura’s colleague and friend, played by the actor Benjamín Amadeo, is outraged in a typical Buenos Aires cafe while recounting all the evils that currently afflict the average Argentine, such as corruption and inflation close to 100%, while lamenting that Argentina is left out of a World Cup with a team that aroused enthusiasm.

The boundaries between fiction and reality seem to blur when Buenaventura sells a necklace to raise money to take his son to the World Cup, since many fans make great efforts to travel to Qatar, at a time when the country is going through a severe economic crisis. .

Argentina, which is undefeated with 35 matches and was the Copa América champion last year, arrives in Qatar at the hands of striker Lionel Messi with the dream of winning another trophy, after winning the World Cups in 1978 and 1986.

“In a country like ours, where happiness is often experienced in dribs and drabs, having a sporting opportunity like the World Cup always generates a lot of expectation,” Furriel said from Spain, where he is filming a movie.

(Reporting by Lucila Sigal, Editing by Eliana Raszewski)

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Stealing the World Cup: the plan of Argentine fans in a new television series