There are a whole variety of sports that the Argentineans play and have made popular over the years. These include from the regular favorites of football and cricket to many more games of rugby and the like. Without a doubt the most important sports in Argentina is the game of Football.
It is popularly also called soccer and although other sports in Argentina are gaining ground increasingly it is football that has been the cult story here. Other important sports here have been basketball, rugby and tennis, while cricket and field hockey have started getting more and more attention. Other sports in Argentina that have assumed great importance are the games of auto racing, volleyball, golf and polo. The other games that are played both professionally and recreatively are athletics and swimming along with mountaineering, skiing, cycling, rink hockey, fishing and pato. Argentina is one of the important sports powers in South America and they have always ended up at the top of the medal tally.
The importance of football in Argentinean culture is gauged from the popularity it has achieved in the past century in this South American heartland. The Argentinean national football team has won two world cups in the year 1978 and 1986 respectively.
In the year 1930 and 1990 the national team was runners up and over the years the Argentinean football federation has won many laurels for the country. Argentina has some of the most famous racing drivers in the world. Drivers like Juan Manuel Fangio and Carlos Reutemmann are some of the familiar names in the motor racing world. Rugby union is also popular and the national team the Pumas regularly visits the Australian and the New Zealand shore which are the Meccas for the game.
There has been an emergence of tennis too in the recent years amongst all the sports in Argentina and significant names in the professional circuit include Guillermo Villas in the 1970s and in the early 1980s the likes of Gabriela Sabatini in the Women's tour. Guillermo Coria and David Nalbandhian have been great players too in their own right for the past few years. Water sports are also enjoyed by many people and skiing is a popular sport especially in the Andean slopes in Central and Southern Argentina.
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