Dear Martin:
Soccer is no stranger to the gospels; We already mentioned Lenin in our letters and now it is Marx’s turn. You will remember what he said about history happening as tragedy and repeating itself as comedy. Well then: in the Kardashian Era, events return as a soap opera. There is the case of Cristiano, about whom we have talked so much, not because of his plays, but because of the convulsed humanity that he revealed in the World Cup.
With characteristic consistency, the Portuguese number 7 threw a tantrum before the coach who sent him to the Siberia of the substitutes, condemning him to stay one goal behind Eusebio’s mark in the World Cups.
Although he does not lose followers on the networks, the clubs do not claim his expensive presence. And you already pointed out a subject of scandal: he has allowed himself to be courted by Al-Nassr, from Saudi Arabia, questioning the rejection that he seemed to have for that dictatorial country. It is possible that in this way he is exercising the human faculty of being inconsistent or that he has given in to another temptation, also human, to speculate to the maximum, advertising the offer in petrodollars so that some European club still considers it desirable.
Luckily, you and I practice a job without retirement that allows us to talk with platonic enthusiasm about youth or haircuts. From that perspective you referred to something essential in football: the heroes and their possible expiration date.
Qatar has brought different variants of the senior football age. Cristiano’s is the saddest. For twenty years he evoked a wide variety of emotions, not including pity. His success was refractory to the pity he arouses today, worthy of “The Wretch” by Nerval, and his “black sun of melancholy.” After the defeat against Morocco, he left the field crying; what is revealing is that he did it in absolute solitude. His grief was not that of someone who practices a sport where the shirts are contagious with blood, sweat and tears, but rather that of a long-distance runner who did not reach the finish line.
On the other hand, at 37 years old, Luka Modric seems capable of repeating the title of best player in the World Cup obtained by Russia. So he was already Pelé’s age when he raised his last drink in Mexico and they recommended retirement plans. But his seniority knows no limits. He led Real Madrid to their most recent Champions League and in Qatar he can only be challenged by another genius from the old guard, the 10th from your country (unless Mbappé still delivers great games).
We are facing two unique forms of energy conservation and distribution. While Modric displays a centrifugal creativity, Messi exercises the most amazing pauses in football and stands out walking. Both are always in the right place: one comes running, the other was already there.
I now turn to a 29-year-old man who is overwhelmed with advice by the world. Against France, Harry Kane gave a match worthy of the legend that enshrines excellence in tea bags: “By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen”; however, he missed a penalty that chance turned into decisive.
Grass psychologists analyze the pressure of taking two maximum penalties in the same game against a goalkeeper with whom you share a team, and locker room scholars recall that Maradona recommended the Tottenham striker change the direction of his shot in the second penal. The dark truth is that penalties are incalculable. His drama depends on that and his poetry.
In 1962, when the World Cup was held in Chile, Roberto Bolaño was 9 years old and lived in Quilpué, fifty meters from where the Brazilian team was staying. He did not miss a single training session for the team that would win the cup. There he met Pelé, Garrincha and Vavá. One day he was able to set foot on the field and the legendary Edvaldo Izidio Neto, known as Vavá, gave him a penalty. Roberto cut him off. “It’s the best feat I’ve ever done,” he would say years later.
Perhaps the nice Vavá wanted to make a Chilean child happy and he shot loosely, or perhaps the writer imagined a plot that ended up being as true as that of the savage detectives. The only certain thing is that a penalty is a fucking mystery.
If anything, Kane is only guilty of obeying too to Maradona. After scoring his first penalty, he sent the second to a totally different place: row 17.
The maximum penalty is an esoteric invention that allows you to be an angel or a demon. Even failing, Kane was something stranger: the best man in England.
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