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PARIS - Argentina has been gripped by Pumamania with rugby pushing soccer, the national game, off the front pages and into second place in the sporting calendar.
Players and coaching staff at the World Cup, where the Pumas have beaten heavyweights France and Ireland on their way to the quarterfinals, are elated by the reaction at home.
The biggest soccer game in the country between Boca Juniors and River Plate was brought forward to an earlier kickoff on Monday (NZ time) so as not to clash with Argentina's quarterfinal against Scotland at the Stade de France.
"This is getting very good coverage," coach Marcelo Loffreda said of the team's results and performances in France where they have won their four matches so far.
"So, it also gets more people (interested), more kids playing rugby, who approach (the game), who start to like it, who begin to be attracted by what the Argentina players feel when they see them sing the anthem," Loffreda, a former Puma, told reporters.
Referring to the change in the kickoff time for the River-Boca classic, Loffreda added: "I think this is a lovely message that Argentine sport is not exclusively about football ...(and) also that (the Pumas occupy) the front pages."
Soccer fans put their first love to one side last weekend, either watching Argentina's 30-15 victory over Ireland on television or taking their transistor radios to football grounds to follow the Pumas match in Paris.
There are radio commentaries of the matches, bars show them on TV and kids are wearing shirts with the horizontal light blue and white Argentine colours in preference to the vertical stripes of the soccer jersey.
Newspapers have explained in their World Cup supplements how the Pumas came by their name, on their first tour abroad in southern Africa in 1965, and the meaning of such terms as try, conversion, drop goal, lineout and scrum.
"It's impressive what the Pumas are generating in the people," said student Nelson Lampert on a Buenos Aires street.
"Now people talk about rugby everywhere. People are getting into it who didn't even know what a try was.
"I think the commitment the team shows match after match got people following the game.
"The lack of success of the national football team, I think is also a reason for this furore. The Pumas lay down everything for the Argentine jersey."
Francisco and his friend Gaston, two 12-year-olds in their final year of primary school, have only just started playing rugby thanks to the Pumas.
"I started to play three weeks ago because, watching the World Cup, I realised I liked rugby," said Francisco.
"In my class we are three (boys) who started rugby this week," said Gaston two days after watching the Pumas beat Ireland 30-15 to secure their quarterfinal berth in Paris.
- REUTERS
