They have sprinkled holy water on TVs, climbed desert dunes for cellphone signals to watch the games and braved Antarctic wind to scream in victory.
The Argentine president, not wanting to break the spell of his team’s winning streak, has refused to take off his jacket.
Having survived weeks of near heartbreak, defeated England in the semifinal and reached the chance for a second straight World Cup crown, Argentina is basking in a state of celebratory grace.
Packed buses are thrumming with chants, and city squares have filled with supporters in tears, embracing strangers, climbing lampposts and blocking traffic. And they haven’t even played the final yet.
“I am constantly on the brink of having a stroke,” said Hernán Ienco, 45, the owner of a family restaurant, Bodegón Central, in a soccer club in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. “During the games you fall to the floor, cry desperately, and then all of a sudden you’re crying of joy.”
Argentina’s national team has led its fans in a tango — a beautiful, heart-wrenching dance of passion and pain. People here have thrown themselves into it entirely. They have closed schools and shops to watch the games, put jerseys on statues and storefronts, taxi seats, dogs and ducks, and enacted elaborate rituals to sway the soccer gods.
A victory on Sunday against Spain would be a final coronation, but the World Cup has already given Argentina much of what it wanted: weeks of collective obsession, suffering, ritual and release.
“I am already happy,” one fan, Sol Rodríguez, 49, said after the victory over England, which caused celebrations to sweep the streets. “I feel like we won.”
The stakes are clear to the players. After Argentina’s last match, its superstar player Lionel Messi said the victories “help us forget everything difficult we are going through,” adding a reference to the financial hardships many Argentines face.
“There are people without jobs, people who can’t make ends meet, and people who are struggling every day,” he said.
He struck a chord with many Argentines, who view soccer in exactly the terms he laid out: an arena where their nation can excel on a global stage, and a fleeting source of pure joy in a country with an often chaotic economy.
“It’s something very crazy,” said Octavio Divito, 29, as he left the cafeteria of a soccer club in Buenos Aires on Thursday. “It’s a soothing balm for the soul.”
Before each match, the streets of Buenos Aires turn into a madhouse of blaring horns as people race to get home. Once the whistle blows, they are deserted.
In many regions, from the sun-baked northern lowlands of Chaco and Formosa to the verdant foothills of Tucumán, the obsession is officially supported. Various local authorities have suspended all classes and closed public offices during games. Businesses like bookstores and pharmacies have shut down. Restaurants and bars with TVs, on the other hand, have been full in the middle of supposed workdays.
Argentines have treated the matches with unyielding intensity.
In the San Juan desert, a dozen local herders climbed to the top of the highest nearby dune to get enough of a signal to watch on one phone. In Santiago del Estero, one man got into a fist fight with a neighbor with a faster broadcast transmission who cheered early for goals — spoiling the game for everyone else, local media reported.
The matches are treated as collective endeavors, with even fans doing their part. Many Argentines have been hard at work summoning good luck through favored rituals like putting the album stickers of opposing players in the freezer.
President Javier Milei had his own superstitions, saying that he wouldn’t travel to the United States for the final match — the team had made it this far with him at home — and that he would always wear the same jacket from the national oil company during play.
“I’m sweating like crazy, but the only time I took it off, they scored a goal on us, so I never took it off again,” Mr. Milei said on Argentine radio on Wednesday.
Like their president, many Argentines follow strict rituals about seating arrangements, when to stand or sit, and where to cast — or avert — their gaze. Some have sprinkled holy water on their TVs during games, and all are careful never to utter the words “if we win,” let alone “we’re going to win.”
Some of the rites are improvised. When an older woman entered a grocery store a few minutes before Enzo Fernández scored a goal during Argentina’s last game, against England, the storekeepers asked her to stay for the rest of the game. She was also invited back for the final.
In a sport increasingly governed by data, many are still betting on a little cosmic intervention.
Fueling the superstitions, in part, is the fact that Argentina has seemed perpetually on the verge of defeat from one match to the next. The team — affectionately nicknamed La Scaloneta after its coach, Lionel Scaloni — has also earned the name of La Infartoneta, a play on “infarto,” the Spanish word for heart attack.
The dizzying emotional swings, from looming defeat to sudden, exhilarating triumph, have inflicted such severe stress on fans that Argentine doctors have published health guides on how to avoid coronary complications during games.
Yet it was precisely within that agony that many found an irrepressible joy.
“There is something there about when it gets difficult, pulling something out of who knows where,” said Agostina Molfese, as she watched her 10-year-old son play soccer with friends, most wearing the Argentine jersey. “We are good at that.”
That was especially true in the England game, which was highly symbolic. It carried the weight of a contentious 1986 quarterfinal, the 1982 war between Argentina and Britain over the Falkland Islands, and a national mythology built around Diego Maradona — the hero of Argentina’s World Cup triumph four decades ago. Argentine fans chant “If you are not jumping, you’re English,” even in games against other countries.
Argentina’s last-minute victory after trailing England for more than 30 minutes was the euphoric culmination of a monthlong, nerve-shredding roller coaster that swung through panic, terror and delight.
“It wasn’t just another victory,” said Argentina’s star, Messi, after the game. “It was an important victory that the Argentine people wanted, and so did we.”
The national pride was bolstered by the fact that, at the game’s end, players held a banner thrown onto the field by supporters that read “The Malvinas are Argentine,” supporting the country’s territorial claim over the Falklands.
For many Argentines, who often view these players — most of whom live and play abroad — as somewhat detached from daily life, the gesture was a meaningful sign that their hearts remained at home.
No part of the country seems untouched. After the England game, a farmworker near Cordoba climbed onto a combine harvester to celebrate. At one of Argentina’s Antarctic bases, a teacher in a short-sleeved jersey stepped into below-zero temperatures to shout, “Let’s go, Argentina, damn it!” into the snow and fierce winds. In the Andean city of Salta, Archbishop Mario Cargnello appeared on the cathedral’s balcony waving an Argentine flag while onlookers blew vuvuzelas.
“The celebrations the other day were just like those after the final,” Ms. Molfese said. “People were completely losing their minds.”
Though many Argentines called the victory against England the “real final,” others had their eyes on the actual prize.
“We all said it felt like winning the Cup,” Mr. Ienco said. But by the next day, he said, “We were already saying we are all going to die if we don’t beat Spain.”
