Believing that the referee was biased against their home team, over 65,500 Argentine fans signed a petition requesting FIFA to void the result and replay the 2026 World Cup final.
Just a few days after the defeat in the match for the golden trophy, Argentine fans launched a campaign on the platform Change.org requesting FIFA to review the match result. To date, the petition has attracted more than 65,500 signatures, and the number continues to rise.
The initiator of the campaign is fan Gisela Sanchez. In the petition content, she argued that Slovenian referee Slavko Vincic made multiple decisions unfavorable to Argentina, directly affecting the final result. Therefore, FIFA was requested to review the entire match and take appropriate measures, including the possibility of holding a replay.
However, this possibility is nearly impossible to happen. Under FIFA regulations, a match is only replayed in special circumstances clearly specified in the laws of the game or by decision of competent authorities.
The last time an international match had to be replayed due to a refereeing error occurred nearly 20 years ago. That was a 2006 World Cup qualifier between Uzbekistan and Bahrain, when the referee made a severe error in applying the rules during a penalty situation, forcing FIFA to void the result and order a replay between the two teams.
This is not the first time fans have demanded a World Cup final replay. Following the final between Argentina and France in 2022, French fans created a petition arguing that several Argentine players entered the penalty box before Lionel Messi took his penalty kick.
The campaign at that time gathered around 215,000 signatures, but FIFA offered no response whatsoever, and the match result remained unchanged.
