The Argentina National Team celebrated its comfortable World Cup semi-final win over Croatia on Tuesday night with a tweet announcing “We are finalists!” in multiple languages.
Right there in the middle of the tweet they tried to include Hebrew, but apparently used a literal Google Translate translation that effectively means the opposite of what they meant.
“Anachnu g’morim” (אנחנו גמורים) means “We are finished,” not “We are finalists.”
It is of course an innocent mistake. And it was touching that Argentina included Hebrew in its tweet given the large number of Israeli fans who are rooting for the South Americans and their star player, Lionel Messi.
Why Argentina chose to include Hebrew is unclear. Israel hasn’t qualified for the World Cup since 1970. Why not Russian? Russia likewise was not in the tournament this year, but is a much larger country with many more football fans.
Whatever the reason, Israelis appreciated the gesture after the hostile reception they’ve received from the host country Qatar and the many fans in attendance from the Arab world.
