The Argentine men’s national rugby team, better known as Los Pumas, reached what was arguably the highest peak in its history last September. Their 29-28 victory over defending world champion South Africa in Santiago del Estero left them within a shot of their first-ever Rugby Championship title. This meant winning a tournament made up of eight weeks of competing exclusively against the world’s elite. High-pressure games where any mistake can spell defeat. 

In social media, however, expressions of admiration and inspiration sat side by side with disdain and mockery. For every congratulatory comment, there were a couple of snarky remarks poking fun at the Pumas’ track record of “historic wins” that always seemed to come up short of top honors. 

When South Africa claimed the title with a 48-7 win over Argentina one week later, mockery stood almost alone.

Los Pumas have undoubtedly come a long way since their days of also-ran status. Argentina was late to professionalism, embracing it only in 2010, 15 years after powerhouses like France, Wales, or New Zealand. In the 14 years since, however, the Pumas have significantly bridged the gap, notching wins against all of them while earning a reputation as a fierce competitor that can beat anyone. 

The aftermath of their stellar Rugby Championship, however, has reignited the inevitable question of what their real status is. Can they be considered truly elite if they can’t seem to make it over the finish line? Or is this their true ceiling? But perhaps the most important question in a place as passionate as Argentine pertains to their ever-elusive relationship with those casual fans that seem to support everyone of the country’s sporting victories except the Pumas.

The switch to professionalism

Eliseo “Chapa” Branca was part of the first great Pumas team between 1976 and 1990. Led by the great Hugo Porta, they proved a landmark for Argentine rugby development by achieving wins against top teams like France, Australia, and South Africa. 

But despite his place in Argentine rugby history, he admits he would’ve loved playing nowadays.

“The time you can dedicate to the sport is different; now they’re professionals,” he told the Herald. “It used to be that you had to make time to work and attend university classes.”

It was this change away from that amateur mentality that allowed the Pumas to bridge the gap with the top teams. For Alejandro Allub, another former Pumas lock, one of the main people responsible for this change was New Zealander head coach Alex Wyllie.

“Argentine rugby was very casual at the time. He pushed for training with the appropriate equipment, sticking to time tables, that sort of thing,” he told the Herald. 

Argentina conquered a major milestone under Wyllie by beating Ireland in a do-or-die match to reach the 1999 World Cup quarterfinals. Despite the achievement, however, the work of getting the team to the top echelon was far from done. 

The introduction of high-performance training plans, known as the PlaDARs, was one of the key changes. The creation of academies owned by the Argentine Rugby Union (UAR, for its Spanish initials) allowed them to scout and develop players from across the country at a younger age, widening the base the Pumas could draw from.

According to Allub, all it took in the old days to get called up to the Pumas at his position was to be close to two metres tall and play decently well. The reasoning was that Argentina needed to close the physical advantage teams like England, New Zealand, or South Africa had. 

“Now there’s a much bigger player pool, so you can choose the best, and everything else is offset by training and nutrition,” he explained.

The opening of the union’s own training complex, Casa Pumas, in 2024, where players have space for themselves and trained with personalized development plans down to the detail, was another key step forward. 

Development in jeopardy

The 2007 World Cup bronze medal remains the Pumas’ sole piece of top-tier silverware. In addition to their stellar performance in last year’s Rugby Championship, however, they also made two other semifinal appearances to cement the near unanimous consensus that they are now a world-class team. 

British-Argentine sports writer Rex Gowar says that even if top teams still manage to beat the Pumas most times, things are far from a closed matter. “Games are much closer now, and sometimes the Pumas manage to win by quite a lot,” Gowar, who authored Pumas: A History of Argentine Rugby, told the Herald.

Pumas Sevens star Marcos Moneta pointed out that the development isn’t confined to the men’s XV team. 

“Pumas Sevens has shown in the last three years it’s a top-three team in the world, and [U-20 team] Pumitas is always in the mix for the win in the World Cups,” he said. 

Female rugby team Yaguaretés is also showing steady progress, while Argentina’s male regional teams are set to compete in a franchise competition known as Super Rugby Americas. 

A major turning point for Argentina’s upward trend came in 2012 when they joined the annual tournament formerly known as Tri-Nations. This gave them the opportunity to regularly test their strength against southern hemisphere powerhouses New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia.

Despite losing 29 of its first 33 games, Argentina closed the gap considerably within the first decade, with its 2024 Championship performance as the cherry on top. But South Africa and New Zealand’s recent unilateral decision to move away from the yearly tournament into a bi-annual competition in favor of more direct duels could jeopardize the Pumas’ progression.

It remains unclear where that replacement could come from. According to Branca, part of the problem is that Argentina is head and shoulders above any competition it can find close by. “The playing level around us — namely in Chile and Uruguay — isn’t top level,” he said, while adding that governing body World Rugby should’ve intervened to keep the Rugby Championship together.

Conquering the fans

The Pumas’ biggest challenge, however, may lay not on the far shores of New Zealand but in the hearts and minds of casual Argentine fans. There are some purely sporting reasons for this divide, but also social and cultural issues for this breach. 

Perhaps the most significant blow was the murder of 18-year-old Fernando Báez Sosa at the hands of a group of young men who played rugby in January 2020. The crime left the sport’s reputation in tatters, and the Pumas’ image was tarnished as collateral damage. 

The incident was so shocking that former Pumas’ captain Agustín Pichot said he felt compelled to phone Báez Sosa’s father and apologize. “Rugby naturalized a lot of things that were wrong,” he admitted to media outlet Infobae in 2023.

Moneta, however, feels that the label is unfair and it’s easier to take a jab because rugby isn’t big in the country. “When a footballer is found abusing their wife or sexually assaulting someone, people don’t say all footballers are like that,” he said.

Even when things stay on the pitch, Argentina’s national team has struggled with perceptions. In November 2020, the All Blacks paid tribute to footballing hero Diego Maradona while the Pumas — who hadn’t prepared any homage — were made to look disconnected from the Argentine public’s mourning.

This particular narrative is one UAR has gone to great lengths to fight. And one of its moves has been to give crowds all over the country the possibility of watching top-tier rugby matches. Whereas the national football team only hosted games in Buenos Aires City in 2024, the Pumas played in four different provinces.

“What you see in those games are casual fans going to the stadium and taking an interest in the sport, which hopefully leads to more people playing it,” Allub explained hopefully.

Gowar pointed out that a lack of access to elite rugby broadcasts could also be a problem. Compared to the broad access to NBA basketball that began percolating alongside the success of “Manu” Ginóbili, top rugby competitions aren’t being followed in the country.

The nuanced nature of the Pumas’ progress has also punished them. Without much in the way of actual accolades, it takes an insider’s knowledge to comprehend and even appreciate what a feat it is to even get to the cusp of beating the top teams. 

However, even former Pumas admit that winning is the only answer.

“We have to naturalize victories. Cut it with the ‘historic this, historic that’. We won, period,” said Allub. 

For Branca, victory is the only path to a fan’s heart. 

“Las Leonas are champions; the Golden Generation were champions. The Pumas are yet to take that final step.”