Spend any time on social media during the last couple weeks and you’ve seen it. The noise. The clips. The accusations that Argentina is getting some kind of secret handshake from FIFA officials at the 2026 World Cup. It’s gone from fringe Twitter accounts to mainstream coverage, and the BBC even ran a piece asking if Argentina is being treated favorably.
But here’s the thing. There’s no evidence of any fix. No smoking gun. No referee caught on a hot mic. What there is, though, is a whole lot of circumstantial suspicion that FIFA brought on themselves.
The actual calls aren’t that bad
If you break down Argentina’s games so far, you won’t find a single howler that would have the Premier League issuing an apology the next day. Lionel Messi raked his studs down a guy’s calf in the opener and didn’t get sent off. That’s probably true. But replays showed minimal force. You’ve seen yellows for that. You’ve also seen nothing given. It’s an orange card either way.
Egypt had a goal disallowed after fouling Lisandro Martinez. They whined about two penalty shouts right before Argentina’s winner, both of which were laughable on replay. Switzerland’s Breel Embolo got sent off on a VAR technicality that had already shown up earlier in the tournament. None of this is a conspiracy. It’s just refereeing, which is messy by nature.
But FIFA keeps making it worse
The real problem is that FIFA keeps blurring its own lines. They pushed to get Cristiano Ronaldo’s suspension reduced so he could play in the group stage. They stepped in on Folarin Balogun’s red card situation too. When the governing body starts treating its own disciplinary rules as negotiable for big names, you can’t be shocked when fans assume the same logic applies to games.
Pierluigi Collina held a press conference this week to address the rumors. “Nobody can question the integrity of the FIFA World Cup match officials,” he said. “When this happens, it may provoke reactions that lead to threats against them and their families. This is not right.”
He’s not wrong. The threats are unacceptable. But he also missed the point. The integrity of individual refs isn’t really what’s being questioned here. What’s being questioned is whether FIFA’s leadership would tilt the scales. And when Infantino’s office keeps intervening in disciplinary cases for marketable players, that question starts sounding less crazy than it should.
Spain manager Luis de la Fuente shrugged off the whole thing. “I watched the game and I thought the referee got everything right.” France boss Didier Deschamps said much the same. Meanwhile Richard Keys is out there tweeting about Collina’s last game as a ref and the ghost goal that never got explained. Which is what always happens with Keys. He’s aiming at one thing and hitting another.
Four seeded teams made the semifinals. You can sell Mbappe vs Yamal. You can sell Kane vs Messi. That’s great for TV. But if you wanted to stop people from thinking the whole thing is rigged, you probably shouldn’t have made the path to that outcome so visible.
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