Some of the world’s biggest football stars – like Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona – come from Argentina.
But its ball-producing sector is in crisis, imports are leaving hundreds of people out of work.
Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reports from Belle Ville in the Argentinian province of Cordoba.
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country located mostly in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, the country is also bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south.
With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2 (1,073,500 sq mi), Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the fourth largest in the Americas, the second largest in South America after Brazil, and the largest Spanish-speaking nation by area.
Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
Diego Armando Maradona was an Argentine professional football player and manager. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, he was one of the two joint winners of the FIFA Player of the 20th Century award.
Lionel Andrés Messi is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a forward and captains both La Liga club Barcelona and the Argentina national team. With the exclusion of only, perhaps, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi is regarded by many as the best football player on the planet.
