Argentina Claims Cyber Attack After Corrupt Refereeing Emails
The drama of Argentina’s wild 3-2 World Cup win over Egypt has spilled off the pitch and into cyberspace, with the Argentine Football Association (AFA) claiming it may have fallen victim to a cyber attack after inflammatory emails were sent from one of its official accounts.
The reigning world champions had already survived a major scare. Trailing 2-0 and staring at a shock last-16 exit, Argentina clawed their way back with a late surge to break Egyptian hearts and book a place in the quarter-finals. The comeback fuelled the usual storm of debate over big calls and big moments. Then the story took a sharp turn.
In Egypt, anger hardened into formal complaint. The Egyptian Football Association lodged an appeal to Fifa, demanding that French referee Francois Letexier and his entire team of officials be removed from the tournament, accusing them of bias in favour of Argentina.
That alone would have been enough to keep the controversy burning. But late on, Argentine outlet La Calle reported something even more explosive: emails, apparently sent from an official AFA account to journalists, claiming “Argentina did not win” and that the result was the product of “corrupt refereeing decisions”. The messages, according to the report, also lavished praise on Egypt’s performance.
The tone was stunningly at odds with the AFA’s public stance and with the mood around a team that had just pulled off one of the tournament’s great escapes. La Calle reported that AFA sources believed a group of hackers of Egyptian origin were behind the messages.
Once the emails surfaced, the AFA moved quickly to distance itself from them and to raise the alarm.
“We want to inform you that we have detected the possible sending of emails from one of our institutional accounts that were not generated or authorised by our team,” the AFA said in a statement.
The governing body urged anyone who had received unusual messages to ignore them, stressing the risk that the account may have been compromised.
It asked the public to “dismiss any message that you have recently received from our account and that is unusual, especially if it contains links, attachments or requests personal information”.
The AFA added that there was “a possibility that our account has been subject to unauthorised access”, confirming that it is investigating the incident and tightening its security measures.
On the field, Argentina march on to the quarter-finals after surviving a night that veered from disaster to delirium. Off it, they now find themselves at the centre of a digital row that has dragged refereeing, national pride and cyber security into the same volatile spotlight.
