Héctor Herrera loses the mark against Messi, in Argentina’s first goal against Tri.MOLLY DARLINGTON (Portal)
Dear Martin:
I send a ball through because I know you’ll get to the ball. What is a correspondence but the desire to meet the other in an unexpected place?
Regardless of geography, the maps create their own space. During South Africa 2010 we had an exchange where football was an unusual meeting point. You’ve traveled the world like a hopeless nomad (you’ve even reached a World Cup stadium), while I, a die-hard sedentary, watched the games from Mexico. Our home was the field, a word the Quechuas gave to the language meaning fenced area. This patch of grass, defined by its boundaries, has opportunities to become inexhaustible. The most effective way to reinvent it is with the through ball: you throw the ball into a wasteland that is being occupied. Writing correspondence has this reactive state; Things come to you based on the other.
Epistolary novels often omit the industrious character that makes them possible: the postman. The e-mail ended with this intercessor and with philately. Some wrote letters just for replies, decorated with the Queen’s portrait or a Bengal tiger.
Our correspondence manages without the postman, but not the stamps, more diverse than those of the Panini albums. With the anticipatory nostalgia you aptly mention, I think of Richarlison’s acrobatic goal, Brazil’s double wall against Croatia, Luis Suárez weeping on the sidelines, the eleven Moroccans kneeling before their people, the silence of the Iranians as they heard their anthem , Luis Chávez’s untenable free-kick against Saudi Arabia…
Two games remain, the one nobody wants to play for imaginary third place and the coveted final. On World Cup days, Eduardo Galeano fled behind a sign that read: “Closed for football”. The difficult thing is to place the opposite poster to regain the habit after the goals. Life is not a business to be closed or opened at will. On Rehab Monday, you’re constantly thinking about plays; You look at the pepper and salt on the table and wonder if they are midfielders or centre-backs. Unfortunately, no detox was invented for acute football.
The only thing that helps is thinking about the next World Cup, where my country will be an extra. The real headquarters will be the United States, which won that right when the FBI exposed FIFA’s corruption. As usual, Mexico and Canada supported Big Brother in exchange for consolation games.
But let’s not get too far ahead. Your hopes for Sunday are high and justified. France have great players but they arrived weakened from too many absences and now three of them have the camel virus. Napoleon arrived in Egypt with less decimated troops, but Deschamps’ real problems lie elsewhere: his team suffers from the inertia of those who know they are powerful, and Argentina yearns for victory with that tragic feeling that defines champions. Messi’s desire to lift the only trophy that has resisted him, the passion of the crowds that fill 9 de Julio street, the famous Abuela that has become a cabal of the neighborhood and the predictions of numerologists all point an albiceleste triumph.
But it is convenient to limit the predictions. Football is so strange that its best prophet was the octopus that guessed the results of Germany 2006.
Have you ever wondered why certain countries are passionate about a World Cup where we can’t stand out? The Argentines have two stars on their chest and missed one more. But the passion for football is so broad that it also includes those of us who only break negative records.
Without bragging rights, here are some records that not everyone has. In 1930, Mexico played with France in the opening game of the World Cup, conceding their first goal and suffering their first defeat. In the next game we scored the first own goal. Since then, our failures have been sustained. If the calculations don’t fool me, we’ve lost 28 games in World Cups, an unmatched number. We are one of the five countries that have played the game the most (the others, Brazil, Germany, Italy and Argentina, have multiple titles to their credit). This persistence has made it possible to achieve amazing statistics. From 1930 to 1958 we went four World Cups without a point and it took us 32 years to get a win.
No country has brought so much emotion for so few results. Now that you are preparing to become champions, I think of the no-reward illusion of mine, of the people who fill the stadiums without depending on the score just for the pleasure of being there. Is there a rational explanation for this? The mystery of almost theological rank can be understood but not said. Javier Solís puts it beautifully in the Ranchera song: “He who knows anything about love is silent and understands.”
With the authority of failure, I wish you every success on Sunday.
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