Will Argentina be punished for their Falklands stunt?

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0:33This is a global production. As the Argentinian players hold up a huge Malvinas banner on the pitch, we're just waiting to see what FIFA actually does. That is just against the rules. And yet from FIFA, crickets. It's so public. It's not like what decision was a ref making or was there a sleight of hand or was there somebody who'd been misfouled or was a judgment sort of unclear. This has literally been broadcast around the world. Look, who else was holding the banner last night? It's Lionel Messi. Is Gianni Infantino going to ban Lionel Messi from playing in the World Cup final on Sunday in New Jersey?

1:24Look, we know how many of you will be feeling. We know how many England fans will be feeling after the defeat of last night. You probably weren't looking at the screen. You probably weren't looking at the pitch at that moment. But if you were, you would have seen some fairly extraordinary scenes of a banner being unfurled and held up, held aloft by the Argentinian players. A banner that claims to want to retake Las Malvinas, the Falklands. And that is in stark contravention of FIFA rules about political symbols being used at sporting events. So the question is, is FIFA going to do anything about it or just turn a willing blind eye?

2:10Welcome to the News Agents.

2:17The News Agents. It's John. It's Maitlis. And I suppose we need to say from the outset, we're not engaging in sour grapes, although I feel pretty bloody sour about the way we lost last night. People can do that on other shows and other podcasts and the like. But it was really fascinating the extent to which FIFA have gone to make sure that politics does not enter this World Cup. And they have screened the flags that England fans have put out to make sure there is nothing that would kind of upset their rules. and yet last night, as you say, Emily, there were a number of players and a number of whom play in England.

2:56I mean, Lissandro Martinez from Manchester United was one of those holding up a banner. Giovanni Lo Celso, who used to play for Spurs until a couple of years ago, was the one who went to fetch it from the crowd. Cutie Romero, the central defender for Tottenham, who's probably going to be transferred this season, but is still on the books at Tottenham Hotspur, was also holding up that banner saying, take back the Falkland Islands, you know, for the Argentinians. And that is just against the rules. And yet from FIFA, crickets, nothing. So far, as we record at 10 to 1 on Thursday, we have not yet heard from FIFA.

3:34Just to take you through the actions, what happened was that the banner clearly belonged to fans. It was thrown onto the pitch. And then, as you say, Lo Celso went towards it. And then the other players kind of followed him into it and they ended up holding up the banner, which says Las Malvinas son Argentinas. The Falcons are Argentinian. And they held it back up to the fans for the cheers. And if you want to know a bit of the background of the Falcons war, I suggest you catch up with our episode on Tuesday, where we go into the rivalry really between our two countries, both on and off the pitch.

4:09But that 10-week war in 1982 left very deep feelings in both countries. It was ultimately won by Britain, by the UK. But there has been a residual sense in Argentina that those islands, which are clearly much closer to Argentina than to Britain, are part of the Argentinian cultural, national, geographical, geopolitical state. and it has become part of, if you like, the legend of football, the legend of a football win that you will say you will take back the islands for the country. It's the way sort of patriotism and football becomes so closely entwined in talking about these islands. And so clearly there was sort of fervour and there was delight from the players on the pitch and their fans.

4:59And, yeah, we want to reiterate this is not about the loss itself, But it is about putting it in the context of what would normally happen on these occasions. And I think it is worth kind of going back to a few of the examples and seeing what normally happens. I mean, I think it was last World Cup, was it two years ago, when Harry Kane was going to wear the Pride armband? Yeah, it was the Qatar World Cup. The Qatar World Cup. So four years ago, the players were going to wear, you know, a fairly low-key Pride armband. And this was in the Southgate days, pretty touchy feely, nice lads sort of brigade.

5:35And they were warned that they could face an immediate yellow card if they went onto the pitch wearing anything like that. And that was not geopolitical in the same way. I mean, the message from FIFA is that anything of that kind is inappropriate for a sports event. And their ruling is very clear. No politics, no ideology, no religious, no offensive messaging. of any nature. It is pretty hard to see how a banner that reclaims national territory is not political. Yeah, completely. And, you know, you talk about Tuesday's episode, Emily. We had Gary Lineker on, who obviously played in that famous match, the 1986 Hand of God game with Diego Maradona, scoring that goal illegally and then, you know, scoring the wonder goal.

6:27he was saying look this isn't about politics it's just about two teams that want to win a football match and want to get to the World Cup final yeah absolutely right in what you say Gary but there was also a bit more after the game last night by the holding up of that banner which was so clearly political and so clearly designed to inflame the passions of the Argentinian supporters in the ground about the Malvinas the Falkland Islands belonging to Argentina and not to the UK. That is political. There is no other way of cutting, slicing, dicing it. It is political. And from FIFA, we haven't heard anything.

7:06From this government, the British government, Peter Kyle, the Business and Trade Secretary, has been speaking about it. Boy, did I support this team and boy, am I proud of this team. When it comes to the Argentinians, I think the dignity with which our team acted, I think, is the perfect contrast and really shows really shows them for their own behaviour by contrast. And when it comes to the rest of it, FIFA need to really take the action that deserves to happen. Because they are quite good at taking action. And if you go back to August 2024, this is Ed Davey pointing this out overnight on Twitter.

7:42Rodri and Alvaro Morata were banned for one match for singing Gibraltar is Spain. Spanish players. Exactly. Now, that is a fairly clear parallel, I would have said. You know, we know that Gibraltar is UK territory and the Spanish players came on, start singing the sort of the idea of reclaiming Gibraltar for Spain and they get a one match ban. And if you go back 12 years, FIFA did discipline. Do you remember the South Korean player took a fan banner? Again, it belonged to the fans. He hadn't brought it himself, but he held it up and it said Dokdo is our territory. This was a South Korean claim on a bit of Japanese territory.

8:22and FIFA did come in. They disciplined him and they said, you're going to miss two qualifying matches in 2014. So two years later, he was still facing a two-match ban. That was a previous incarnation of FIFA, we should say. Yes. Well, look, who else was holding the banner last night? Because on the corner, you know, at the corner, it's Lionel Messi holding up the banner. Is Gianni Infantino going to ban Lionel Messi from playing in the World Cup final on Sunday in New Jersey. I think the chances... Answers on the postcode. Exactly. It's just nil. There is no chance whatsoever that he is going to do that.

9:03The Argentine... You know, the Argentinian players, it's been a complaint of a number of different teams who've come up against them, that they have been treated more leniently than other teams. And Infantino just... I mean, we've seen what he did once Donald Trump intervened over the American strike of Belgra. You know, oh, sorry. No, that red card is rescinded. He can play in the next game. I just don't think there's any chance at all. And again, this calls into question FIFA and what it's for. That these has these high and mighty lofty ideals. And yet when the rubber hits the road, it will take the expedient way out and turn blind eyes and close its ears and close its eyes to all evil and wrongdoing.

9:43Look, it is not breaking news that Gianni Infantino is not Mother Teresa of morality stakes. I don't think any of this has come as a surprise, whether it was his caving to Trump or whether it will be presumably very little action on this. I mean, let's let's wait and see. Maybe I'm wrong. I think, I mean, what I was understanding yesterday, interestingly, was that Infantino felt that he had been busted by Trump. So over that whole red card issue, he thought the whole thing could be sort of quietened down until Trump came out and went, yeah, I did do it. And the way that Infantino likes to work is sort of hush hush.

10:21You know, we won't talk about this. We'll see what happens. You know, it might get overturned. Nobody will really know the ins and outs of this. And then Trump comes out and does an actual press conference and says it. I think here it's a very different case because it's so public. It's not like what decision was a ref making or was there a sleight of hand or was there somebody who'd been misfouled or was a judgment sort of unclear? This is literally been broadcast around the world at the most dramatic moment of World Cup football so far. And so you have to assume that there will be a lot of people that are pressing him to respond to this in some shape or form.

10:58But on the other side, we've also seen Argentinian politicians who seem to be goading on what the players have done. The vice president herself put out a tweet with video. I mean, if you're watching, you will understand what we're going to talk you through. It's a grainy picture from 1982, which shows the Argentinian soldiers in the Falklands. And they make the direct connection. This is a victory. This is a win. This is for Las Malvinas. And that comes from the top of the government. Yes, that's the vice president. And with the words, it wasn't just another match last night. It wasn't just another match.

11:38you know she's absolutely directly linking this football match to the territorial future of the Malvinas of the Falkland Islands and I you know it's pretty extraordinary I surely if there are disputes over the Falklands and there is a kind of talks that will take place in some future day over what the settled status should be then that is the place that they should do it but to try and whip it up in the context of a football match does seem to me that the argentine football association and the government are not playing by fifa's rules at all and are willfully and flagrantly ignoring them and presumably the calculation is that they will get that i mean there was another game i think in again you talk about uh 2012 i think there was a game where argentina were playing a friendly against Slovenia.

12:32And some players held up that banner saying, you know, the Falkland Islands are Argentinas. And they got a£20 ,000 fine. That is a slap on the wrist, given the money that is in football right now. It's a tickle. It's a little tickle. You barely feel that, you know, it's touching the hand. So I think that that is where we are now. And I mean, just it is worth comparing. OK, so you've had that video from the vice president of Argentina. From number 10 today, we had this statement. The World Cup might not be ours, but the Falklands definitely are. Our position is unchanged and our commitment to the Falklanders is unwavering.

13:11The PM wishes both teams well for the final, especially Spade. Brilliant. I mean, they must have enjoyed drafting that in number 10 this morning. We wish both teams well, especially Spade. But there is still a lightness of touch, I think, coming from the number 10 side. I mean, we're not parading our soldiers on screen, right? The shadow, the conservative sports minister, Louis French, put out something that I think was slightly more condemnatory. Last night's pathetic stunt by the Argentinian team was shameful and FIFA must throw the book at them. Look, I do think to your original point, one of the questions will be, are England fans concentrating on this?

13:55Because there is a sense of genuine, actually, just a sort of sadness about last night. It wasn't anyone's fault. I mean, look, we will leave it to the pundits to go into, you know, how the game was played and all the rest of it. But I think overwhelmingly, we weren't cheated. There wasn't foul play. It wasn't terrible. It just felt sad. If you supported England, it just feels sad today. And I think as a result of that, there is this sort of rush of emotion onto something that we can hold on to, which is like that fucking flag. Right. Well, the funny thing is that I think there were complaints that if you were talking about the game itself, you could say that Argentina came onto the pitch and played a game where they were clearly trying to goad, irritate, provoke the England players.

14:44There were just the sneaky little fouls, lots of them very early on in the game. The Simone family alive and kicking. I mean, you know, it was, you know, it kind of, it conformed to every stereotype of, oh, we're playing the Argies and they'll play dirty and it'll be rough. And there was some rough stuff that went on. And sure enough, the England players were a little bit aggravated, but kept their cool. It was afterwards that the real rough stuff happened. You know, if the provocation, if we're talking about provocation, that banner being held up before those thousands of Argentinian fans against all FIFA rules.

15:15If that ain't a breach of the rules, I don't know what is. If it had been held up before, would A, something have happened to the match and B, would we have won? Those questions, those sliding door moments, we will be pondering and debating in pubs for years to come. We'll be back just after the break. Talking about Ukraine.

15:41Summer is here, which means we all want to look and feel our best. A GLP-1 may be right for you. Visit orderlymeds.com to learn more about which GLP-1 you could be eligible for. Getting started is fast, easy, and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals. Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds.com slash podcast. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Taking care of yourself feels great. Comp-out and medications are not FDA-approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

16:27They're chanting Federov, Federov, because protests have broken out across Ukraine, not just Kiev, after President Zelensky dismissed his highly popular defence minister, just six months in the job, and a man who's credited with really having turned a lot of the fortunes in this war around. Under Fedorov's sort of leadership in the role, Ukraine basically took on Russia with these mid and long range drone strikes. They were widely seen as giving Kyiv the upper hand. He launched reforms of the army. He boosted pay for soldiers. And crucially, he persuaded Elon Musk to cut off that illicit Starlink access for Russian soldiers, which gave Ukrainian forces a big advantage on the battlefield.

17:16So you've got this highly popular figure who's been very effective, who's digitally minded, who's thinking like a lot of the young are there, doing extraordinarily creative things in the world of drones. And suddenly, after just six months, he's out and the people don't like him. So they're taking to the streets, chanting his name and making life, I think, pretty uncomfortable right now for Zelensky, who is the man who fired him. Yeah. And I think that it's almost like a battle between the past and the future. The person that Zelensky has chosen to back is the chief of the army, General Sersky, who's this sort of almost Soviet era style general who was brought up on the old fashioned schooling of the military against this guy Fyodorov, who is, as you say, Emily, the young, dynamic, tech minded, drone enabling kind of leader, but who's also ruffled feathers in the military establishment by resisting kind of demands to give contracts to favoured suppliers and all the rest of it.

18:20And so you can imagine the noses that have been put out of joint by this young upstart who has probably turned the war in Ukraine's favour by this concentration in the air, but who has pissed people off along the way. And we should say that flying into this godawful mess is one Keir Starmer, who, after last night's defeat, changed his plans, presumably, around about five to ten and thought, well, I'm not going to be going to New York this weekend, but I will say my final goodbyes to Zelensky in Kiev. And I suppose in a way he sort of continues that trajectory of UK prime ministers who have slightly sort of used Zelensky to sort of boost their own standing at home by being alongside him, whether it was Boris Johnson or whether it's sort of Keir Starmer.

19:09And so this was meant to be another valediction. Kirstama has said, has maintained that we will stand alongside Ukraine, whatever happens. It's not just for now. It's not just for Christmas. It's for life. It's a proper friendship and a loyalty between our two countries. But he flies into Kiev just at the moment where Zelensky himself is feeling pretty under attack, where there's a lot of really unsettled beef between his administration, the top people in the jobs, and where you've got literal protests of people on the street saying, what are you doing, Zelensky? How on earth did you let that happen?

19:43Well, we're joined now by Christopher Miller, who is the Financial Times chief correspondent in Kiev and has been leading the reporting on what is this extraordinary unfolding situation over the sacking of Fedorov and the backlash to it. So what is the crime that Fedorov is perceived to have committed by Zelensky that has led to his sacking? I think it's not solely one thing, but what Mikhail Fedorov told myself and other reporters today in Kiev was that President Zelensky had finally had it over this row between Fedorov and the top general, Ukraine's commander in chief, whose name is Oleksandr Sirsky.

20:33He's an old school kind of Soviet minded general who has led the army for the past few years. He's very close to Zelensky, very loyal to the president, but really butts heads with Fedorov, who is a very young tech minded and savvy guy who looks at drone warfare as the future of war. And, you know, drone warfare is what has really turned the tide for Ukraine on the battlefield in the last few months. Tsersky has a different approach to the war. And it's gotten so bad, the disagreements between them, that Zelensky said that these two men were unable to even meet and be in the same room with each other while fighting the same war against the Russians without Zelensky's presence.

21:20So he was essentially playing mediator between the two. And it had gotten so bad that the now former defense minister, Fyodorov, had told Zelensky, I think you need to get rid of your old general. We need some fresh blood, new ideas, people who will go along with this new way of war that we're fighting. And Zelensky said he couldn't fire it. He couldn't sack him. And the general came back with an ultimatum of his own saying, it's me or him. And the president sided with the general. And so he pushed out Fyodorov. There are other reasons for it. But this seems to be the main one, according to both Fyodorov and President Zelensky, who actually stood beside Sir Kir Starmer today while he's visiting Kiev, and said to reporters who asked him that it had gotten that bad, that he just finally had to make a decision.

22:10Do you understand why, Chris, he chose Sierski, the general, over Fedorov? Because Fedorov seems to be an incredibly popular figure. We've seen the protests already on the streets of Kiev and certain publications coming out to support Fedorov. We know that he was this transformative guy. You talked about his role with the drones, but this digitally transforming minister previously. I mean, was there a threat, do you think, politically to Zelensky or did he just owe the general more? It's maybe a little bit of both. Zelensky is a particularly sensitive, image conscious person. He comes from a media world, the TV world.

22:54He does not like to be overshadowed. We have seen him push out other very capable technocrats and ministers whose stars have shined a little bit brighter than his at times. Fyodorov certainly is popular and at times has probably been as popular, if not more popular than the president. Certainly among Ukraine's younger generations, he's extremely popular. You know, Zelensky siding with Sirsky, I think also is, you know, for continuity reasons. He's led the military since the ousting of the former top general, Valery Zaluzhny, which in and of itself was a very controversial decision. He's now the ambassador in London in a sort of form of exile.

23:37But Sirsky, it is a bit confounding because Sirsky is not popular among the general public. And even among Ukraine's soldiers, he's known as the butcher. This is a nickname he's got from battles that have been particularly bloody and led to massive casualties on the Ukrainian side. Yet he, from what I hear, is a rather crafty, military-minded, classical general. And Zelensky is not a military-minded guy. I think he, for whatever reason, has come to really respect the word of Sirsky. I think Sirsky has shown great loyalty, but at the same time, so is Fedorov, which makes this really, really quite confounding.

24:23It was actually Fedorov who helped Zelensky in his viral presidential campaign that led him to win with more than 70 percent of the vote and win the presidency in a landslide. And so it's really quite confounding here. And he was the one that got Elon Musk to block Starlink to Russia, right? So, I mean, he's had a really dramatic effect, presumably, on the war itself. He did. He's developed relationships with all sorts of Silicon Valley titans. You know, Elon Musk is one of them. Former Google exec, Eric Schmidt, who has poured money into the drone program here, tested drones of his own. They have a close relationship.

25:08He has overhauled the government. Before, he was defense minister. He was the minister of digital transformation. And he created this new app that really lets Ukrainians do just about everything from pay your bills to get married, even get divorced on an iPhone. And he's done similar things in the military. And I think one thing that has proven to be a bit controversial among the military side is that he's also revolutionized the way in which military arms and equipment are procured. And it's a very profitable industry, defense procurement. And he has sort of gotten in the way of some very wealthy, business minded people who are close to the president, and instead created this platform on which soldiers and their units can purchase their own equipment and arms.

26:06And so kind of going around the middleman where these powerful business interests would be making money. So, Chris, we have seen protests now in cities across Ukraine since the sacking Fedorov. Am I right in saying that this is the first time that there have been protests against Zelensky of this nature since the invasion took place back in February 2022? It's the second time. Exactly one year ago, President Zelensky and his powerful chief of staff at the time tried to strip Ukraine's independent anti-corruption agencies of that independence and bring them under control of Zelensky's handpicked prosecutor general.

26:48You might remember them by the kind of snappy acronyms, NABU and SAPO. It was a year ago that Zelensky tried to do this, and he pushed this legislation through parliament. His MPs quickly rubber-stamped it. It caused a huge public uproar, and thousands and thousands of Ukrainians went out, including to the very square where they're standing today, in protest of this decision. And Zelensky and his ruling party in parliament quickly backtracked. They pushed through new legislation to give that independence back to these anti-corruption agencies. Those protests were massive. These are at least the same size and only the second protests since the start of the full-scale invasion began.

27:32So they're very rare. So the obvious follow-up question to that is, what do you think that these protests might see Zelensky being forced to change his mind over his support for Sersky over Fedorov? That is certainly what many Ukrainians want, particularly young Ukrainians. I've seen statements from members of parliament, both in the ruling party, and I spoke with some of them today. I've been in contact with them, who are not prepared to vote for Zelensky's preferred candidate in protest. Opposition MPs were at the press briefing with Mr. Fedorov earlier today. Fedorov himself said he was prepared to continue working either as defense minister or in another capacity as long as it was focused on the war effort.