+
Sign up for
The Upworthiest
Our top stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox.
upworthy
Joy

Andrés Cantor waited decades to make this World Cup call. He brought everyone to tears.

The Argentine-American sportscaster's emotional response to his home country's win won everyone's hearts.

argentina, world cup
Photo by Rhett Lewis on Unsplash

Andrés Cantor finally got to call the World Cup win for Argentina.

If you didn't watch the 2022 World Cup final, you missed a historic event. I'm not even a soccer fan and I was sweating long before it was over. It was truly a riveting game.

First, a brief synopsis. At the end of regular time, France and Argentina were tied 2-2. After two harrowing 15-minute overtimes, they were still tied, at 3-3.

Only two other World Cup finals in history have still been tied after two overtimes, in 1994 and 2006. The game then came down to a penalty kick shootout, in which five players from each team faced off one-on-one with the goalkeepers. France missed two of their first four kicks, so when Argentina's Gonzalo Montiel successfully kicked the fourth goal, the Argentine team walked away the victors.

But there was more that made this game historic. France won the last World Cup in 2018, so if they triumphed this year, they'd be only the third team in history to win back-to-back titles. However, Argentina has Lionel Messi, who has played professional soccer for 18 years and has long been seen as one of the best players of all time but had never won a World Cup. In a career full of championship wins and records, the World Cup title was the only major soccer achievement he had yet to accomplish.

And, to make the match-up even more interesting, France's star player, Kylian Mbappé, is viewed as the next Lionel Messi, so there was the old guard versus new guard element to this game as well.

It was a World Cup fraught with significant players, but there was one more person to watch—Argentine-American sports announcer Andrés Cantor.

Cantor moved to the U.S. from Buenos Aires, Argentina, when he was a teen and has citizenship in both countries. He watched Argentina win the World Cup in 1978 and in 1986 before he started announcing the global event in 1990. Since then, 59-year-old Cantor has become famous for his sports commentary on Telemundo and his epically long "Gooooooooooooal!" when a player scores. He has also had to call two losing World Cup finals for his home country of Argentina, in 1990 and 2014.

Soccer is popular in a lot of countries, but it's particularly huge in Argentina. If you want to feel the emotion of an entire country wrapped up in one man, look no further than Andrés Cantor making the call as Argentina scored the knockout goal:

English translation courtesy of Sports Illustrated:

“GOOOOOOAL, Argentina is the champion. Argentina is the world champion. ARGENTINA IS THE WORLD CHAMPION! ARGENTINA IS THE WORLD CHAMPION! ARGENTINA IS THE WORLD CHAMPION! Argentina! Is the world champion! From the sky they did it. You guys did it, players. They won the sky. Argentina is the world champion. Messi is the world champion. It couldn't be any other way. Argentina. Lionel Scaloni's Argentine selection is the world champion. Argentina. Argentina is the world champion. ... 36 years, waiting ... Argentina, Argentina is the world champion.”

However, you don't have to understand a word he says to understand what he was feeling.

"It was a roller coaster of emotion," Cantor told the hosts of NBC's TODAY. "I was just trying to be calm, cool and collected, but I was overwhelmed."

What an incredible moment for Cantor, who has waited his entire career for an Argentina World Cup win. And to win it in such a dramatic fashion with the legendary Messi gaining the final jewel in his crown—it's just the stuff sports fans live for.

Congratulations to Cantor, Messi and all of Argentina for their team's hard-fought victory. Argentina campeón del mundo!

From Your Site Articles
andrés cantor
Badge
Visit Sweden
Visit Sweden
Education

Sweden’s landmark new proposal will stop the world from mixing it up with Switzerland

Honestly, do you know the difference?

True

After over a thousand years of peaceful relations, European semi-superpowers Sweden and Switzerland may finally address a lingering issue between the two nations. But the problem isn’t either country’s fault. The point is that the rest of the world can’t tell them apart. They simply don’t know their kroppkakor (Swedish potato dumpling) from their birchermüesli (a Swiss breakfast dish).

This confusion on the European continent has played out in countless ways.

Swedish people who move to the United States often complain of being introduced as Swiss. The New York Stock Exchange has fallen victim to the confusion, and a French hockey team once greeted their Swiss opponents, SC Bern, by playing the Swedish National Anthem and raising the Swedish flag.

Skämtar du med mig? (“Are you kidding me?” in Swedish)

Keep ReadingShow less
travel
Family

Mom comes out to her 7-year-old as a sexual assault survivor. The discomfort was worth it.

Sometimes speaking our truth can help history from repeating itself.

Canva

Almost all the important conversations are uncomfortable

Sarah Shanley Hope's story is frighteningly common.

As a kid, she went over to her neighbor's house one day to play with her best friend. While there, her friend's older brother sexually assaulted both of them.

Hope was only 6 years old.

Keep ReadingShow less
kids
Humor

Woman shares wedding album her mom made that’s making people crack up

The photos were beautiful, but there was something hilariously wrong with the captions.

Niki Hunt|TikTok

Woman's wedding gift from her mom is making people laugh.

There's no denying that a wedding day is a special memory most people want to hold onto for the rest of their lives. It's the reason people spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on wedding pictures and hand out disposable cameras to guests—to capture memories from all angles, including behind-the-scenes moments that you may forget due to the nerves beforehand.

One mother of the bride decided to take her daughter's beautiful wedding photos and create a special personalized photo album. But upon further inspection of the gift, the bride noticed that something was amiss. Niki Hunt, told Good Morning America that when her mom, Sherry Noblett, gave her the wedding album at brunch, she admitted she may have messed up.

"She’s very crafty, so usually when she says something like that, it’s something really small. I'm thinking some of the pictures are askew, or whatever," Hunt explained to GMA.

Keep ReadingShow less
wedding album mistake
Identity

A woman requested inspiring middle-age success stories, and the internet delivered—big time

There's nothing magical about "making it" in your younger years.

Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash, @JillHannaA/Twitter, @KateGrand/Twitter

It all can happen at just the right time.

Media outlets love to compile lists of impressive people under a certain age. They laud the accomplishments of fresh-faced entrepreneurs, innovators, influencers, etc., making the rest of us ooh and ahh wonder how they got so far so young.

While it's great to give credit where it's due, such early-life success lists can make folks over a certain age unnecessarily question where we went wrong in our youth—as if dreams can't come true and successes can't be had past age 30.

Keep ReadingShow less
aging well
Mental Health

The danger of high-functioning depression as told by a college student

Overachievers can struggle with mental health issues, too.


I first saw a psychiatrist for my anxiety and depression as a junior in high school.

During her evaluation, she asked about my coursework. I told her that I had a 4.0 GPA and had filled my schedule with pre-AP and AP classes. A puzzled look crossed her face. She asked about my involvement in extracurricular activities. As I rattled off the long list of groups and organizations I was a part of, her frown creased further.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Her boyfriend asked her to draw a comic about their relationship. Hilarity ensued.

The series combines humor and playful drawings with spot-on depictions of the intense familiarity that long-standing coupledom often brings.

All images by Catana Chetwynd


"It was all his idea."

An offhand suggestion from her boyfriend of two years coupled with her own lifelong love of comic strips like "Calvin and Hobbes" and "Get Fuzzy" gave 22-year-old Catana Chetwynd the push she needed to start drawing an illustrated series about long-term relationships.

Specifically, her own relationship.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trending Stories