UK minister urges Fifa to probe Argentina over Falklands banner display after beating England

A British minister yesterday (16 July) called for Fifa to investigate after Argentina's players held up a banner reading "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" (The Falklands are Argentine) after their 2-1 victory over England.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Downing Street office backed the calls by Business Minister Peter Kyle following the World Cup semi-final match.

Kyle called the flag waving an "egregious violation" of Fifa rules which ban political symbols on the field of play.

"The World Cup might not be ours, but the Falkland Islands definitely are," a Downing Street spokesperson said.

Argentina invaded the British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic in 1982.

But Britain regained the archipelago in a brief war after then prime minister Margaret Thatcher dispatched a naval taskforce.

Kyle urged football's global governing body Fifa to "thoroughly" investigate the banner incident after Wednesday's match in Atlanta.

"Politics needs to be separate from football. In fact, the World Cup has one of its central tenets that politics is separate from football," he told BBC television.

"That is now a matter for Fifa... We expect Fifa to undertake an investigation into this," he added.

Fifa has not yet commented on the incident.

Britain occupied the Falklands in the 19th century, but Argentina claims the islands are part of its territory.

Argentina President Javier Milei meanwhile called the stunt "perfectly valid and legitimate."

"It's a feeling that exists within all Argentines," he told El Observador radio station.

But he urged against mixing politics with sport, adding that "a football match is a football match."

"The Malvinas are Argentine, we're going to recover them, and we will do it through diplomatic means," said Milei.

Argentina's vice president, Victoria Villarruel, upped the tensions ahead of Wednesday's kick-off by calling the English "usurping pirates".

The 1982 conflict ended with the deaths of 649 Argentines and 255 Britons.

Following their World Cup semi-final victory, Argentina's foreign minister said Buenos Aires had filed a formal protest over a British warship near the Falkland Islands.

Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno posted on X to express "the strongest rejection" of the United Kingdom's HMS Medway's "unconsulted and illegal" passage through Argentine territorial waters, alleging a lack of proper notification.

Quirno said the Medway, which is based in the Falkland Islands, was accused of violating bilateral agreements in a July 13-dated diplomatic note of protest submitted to the UK embassy in Buenos Aires.