ARGENTINA’S GOVERNMENT HAS decided to rename the country’s top football division after a naval ship sunk by British torpedoes during the Falklands War.
The season, which begins on Friday, will be the known as the Crucero General Belgrano Primera División or Cruiser General Belgrano First Division in English.
Argentina lost 649 servicemen in the war, 323 of whom were crew members on the Belgrano in May, 1982.
The Argentinian government owns the rights to First Division matches and shows games on free-to-air TV.
The Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano sinks amid orange life rafts holding survivors in the South Atlantic Ocean, after being torpedoed by the British Royal Navy on 1 May, 1982. Pic: AP Photo/ File
Advertising time during the matches is often used to promote the accomplishments of the government, which says the islands it calls “Las Islas Malvinas” belong to Argentina, of course.
The 30th anniversary of the start of the 10-week war is 2 April.
- additional reporting AP
I think sending UK nuclear submarine to Falklands is called stirring it.. or bullying. And they tell Iran can’t have the bomb…
It was a nuclear powered hunter killer sub, not a nuclear armed sub.
Could be both
No it can’t. Britains nuclear subs Polaris and Trident are strategic weapons platforms, they carry intercontinental ballistic missiles. Their effectiveness is based on being hidden in deep waters. There is absolutely no way that they would be deployed in a battle theatre.
Genius!
A football related article, leading to a badly worded and poorly researched anti English comment, headed by a profile pic of a top 6 English football team. Confused much? I am.
What’s anti English about my comment.. They sent a sub with Tomahawk capability, not an expert on nuclear weapons but, possibly tactical nuke tomahawks, to Falklands. Simple statement of fact. Someone stated the Argies were stirring it by renaming their football league after what they think are heros, and I am just balancing his/her anti Argentina statement. I have no issues with English people, its just their government that stinks. Same opinion of US government. Thanks for the English lesson.. and your nice demonstration of being an arsehole…
Ed, the first Tomakawk missiles were delivered to the Royal Navy in 1997, 15 years after the Falklands War and 7 years after the sub, Conqueror was decommissioned.
There is no record of any Toahawks anywhere being fitted with nuclear warheads.
Thanks Peter… Of course Israel has no nuclear weapons either… But we all know that when goverments move their lips they are lying…
The Tomahawk cruise missile, mainstay of the U.S. arsenal, was designed to fly at extremely low altitudes at 550 mph (880 km/h), launched by a solid rocket booster, then flown by a turbofan engine. The first operational use was in Operation Desert Storm, 1991, with immense success. The Tomahawk long range, subsonic cruise missile can attack targets on land (Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM)) and at sea (Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile (TASM)). The TLAM can be fitted with either conventional unitary warhead (TLAM\C), nuclear warhead (TLAM\N) or submunition dispenser (TLAM\D).
As far as I remember the Belgarno was sunk on the direct orders of Margaret thatcher, outside the exclusion zone, on it’s way back to port immediately after the declaration of war.it was manned mainly by young conscripts on a training exercise.
nonsense, the belgrano was one half of a naval pincer movement along with the argentine aircraft carrier “25th of may” which hoped to ambush the british landing and supply ships,maybe even the escort vessels,on recieving intelligence that the british sub was in the area made a tactical and wise withdrawl.while she was,outside the exclusion zone she was actually heading back into it with the intention of commencing shore bombardments of the british landing forces.there were naval conscripts on board but the last thing they were doing was training,utter madness in the middle of a war btw.the british had numerous reasons for sinking her a fact borne out years later by top argentine naval officers who agreed they were a legitimate target. the problem is if you repeat a fallacy often enough sometimes…many times it becomes “history”
Gotcha
It was a pearl harbour as well when the japs made there move. Survived obviously and was sold to the argies
The Belgrano was sunk outside the 200-nautical-mile (370 km) total exclusion zone around the Falklands.
The sinking occurred 14 hours after President of Peru Fernando Belaúnde proposed a comprehensive peace plan and called for regional unity.
According to the British historian Sir Lawrence Freedman, in a book written in 2005, neither Thatcher nor the Cabinet was aware of the Belgrano’s change of course before the cruiser was attacked, as information from HMS Conqueror was not passed on to the Ministry of Defence or Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward (commander of the RN task force
)In May 1983, Prime Minister Thatcher appeared on Nationwide, a live television show on BBC1, where Diana Gould (1926–2011)[22][23] questioned her about the sinking, claiming that the ship was already west of the Falklands and heading towards the Argentinian mainland to the west. Gould also claimed that the Peruvian peace proposal must have reached London in the 14 hours between its publication and the sinking of the Belgrano, and the escalation of the war could have thus been prevented
sounds like the stirring of a bucket.
Ah The Falklands now I remember a British island thousands of miles away from the “mainland” but next door to Argentina, it all makes sense now…….
The Malvinas are as British as the six counties. Colonialism is still alive and well.
It might sink as well
The lad second from the left on the picture is defo wearing a tipp jersey :P
thats right!!
One to equal the Thatcher movie
its a bad sign when you have to name something after a sunken battle ship!
why not call it the “we got our ass kicked when we last picked a fight” league?
Yeah, as opposed to a bank? lol
I wonder if fans will chant “going down….going down” to struggling teams?
ah crap, what the hell are the uk doing on a tiny island quarter the way round the planet…and wasn’t this ship sunk twice?
@ m fagan
14 hrs or 14 mths, both armed forces were on a war footing and acted accordingly,as has been mentioned by top naval officers connected with the incident a ships course and especially one of the belgranos capabilities is compleatly irrelevent,as a ship can change it’s course in a matter of minutes,this decision was based on location location location.she posed a real threat pure and simple.how het sinking escalated the war,i fsil to see.p.s i belive of course that the falklands should of course be argentinian.