Fútbol Criollo

The term Fútbol Criollo stands for a style in Argentinian football that put emphasis on individualism and free movement. When British immigrants imported the sport of football, the newly founded clubs had a policy of exclusion towards the local creole population. As a reaction, Argentinians created their own style with the focus on technique and movement, being an antipode to the more physical and tactically rigid British style. The Creole players had to be well versed in their own footballing language, as poet Eduardo Galeano explains, “football players created their own language in that tiny space where they chose to retain and possess the ball rather than kick it, as if their feet were hands braiding the leather.”