If they devalued the currency, “no one on this day would take any notice”, one of the hundreds of thousands of Argentines waiting to greet their footballing heroes tells me in downtown Buenos Aires.
Argentina has been euphoric since its third World Cup victory on Sunday. People have flooded the streets of the capital in a carnival-like celebration to mark the most important win in a generation, and welcome the star players home.
Revellers climbed traffic lights. Giant football shirts adorned office buildings. Cars with replica golden trophies strapped to their roofs tooted their horns and the unofficial tournament song “Muchachos” or “Boys”, rang out spontaneously from strangers standing at bus stops and road junctures.
Argentina’s triumph comes amid political turmoil and a battered economy. Inflation is expected to reach 100 per cent in the year to December. Poverty is high and inching higher. The local peso has collapsed against the US dollar on the widely used black market exchange rate, shattering people’s purchasing power.
Politics isn’t much brighter. Vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was found guilty of corruption this month and the popularity of the leftwing president Alberto Fernández has fallen so far that he was advised not to travel to present the prize to team captain Lionel Messi.
Argentina’s success in the month-long World Cup championship has offered respite to the country of 46mn from years of economic underperformance and knocks to their national pride.
“This is our one single moment of greatness, in 36 years!” father of three Hector Fose claims as he joins the crowds with his children to watch the squad parade past in an open-top double-decker bus. Fose was eight in 1986 when Argentina last brought the trophy home.
Among the sea of supporters dressed in sky blue and white was an elderly blind man being guided by his equally elderly wife. They had followed the television commentary tracking the plane live from Doha, as families set up barbecues along the highway from the airport to catch a glimpse of Messi before dawn.
As a Brit, the closest event I could compare the scenes this week to would be the crowds at a royal jubilee — only with Messi as their king.
A moment “suspended in time” is what the victory represents, according to Argentine sociologist Pablo Alabarces. “This is an explosion of emotion,” Alabarces tells the FT. “This is just a big night out on the razzle” — and the hangover will inevitably follow.
Challenges could return with a vengeance. Many remain sceptical that the sporting win will translate into a boost for the unpopular government or help restore confidence in the economy.
Several provincial governors in Argentina rebelled against a decision to call a national holiday in the name of football, given that the team caravan was exclusively touring Buenos Aires, a reminder of the divisions outside sport.
Messi refused an invitation from the presidential palace to replicate a photo of the late Diego Maradona, who as captain decades before had kissed the trophy from the pink balcony of Evita Perón fame. Instead, the team encouraged fans to follow their bus to the Obelisk monument where up to 1mn people had gathered immediately after Gonzalo Montiel fired the winning kick.
Security failures meant the bus never reached the monument. The squad were helicoptered out to the disappointment of millions, who directly blamed the president.
Seventy-four-year-old Miguel Angel Guerrero, who runs my local kiosk, estimates that the euphoria will wear off within a week. Miguel has started reducing his stock in what is usually a profitable festive month, sensing that customers won’t have much money to spend this Christmas.
“A great proportion of people aren’t going to be able to buy a meal, let alone gifts,” he says. Prices for the sweets and tobacco he sells have been rising roughly 5 per cent on average each month since the start of the year. Public anger is building.
The World Cup, he says, has been like a “soothing balm” to escape hardship and unite a wounded nation. But reality will soon bite.
