Eduardo Sacheri: “The Malvinas thing was impressive. A 70-day war from which they sold us 65 party days”

Eduardo Sacheri (Castelar, Argentina, 54 years old) has Italian blood (his great-grandfather Sacheri, a musician, was the one who emigrated to America) and Galician on his mother's side, from O Rosal (Pontevedra), from where he inherited the surname Álvarez.

In 2005 he published his first novel,

, which he turned with Juan José Campanella into

, an Oscar-winning film and a worldwide blockbuster.

In it, Ricardo Darín pronounces the famous phrases that define, like few others, the spirit of a football fan.

“A guy can change everything: his face, his house, his family, his girlfriend, his religion, his God.

But there's one thing he can't change: he can't change his passion."

Six novels and several volumes of stories later, Sacheri now presents

(Alfaguara, 2022), the story of an impromptu journey through Patagonia by a father with his adolescent and angry children (with the father, with the world) that is revealed as the father's own inner journey to his own adolescence, and the facts occurred during a soccer tournament in which he was a goalkeeper.

Sacheri, who took advantage of his visit to Spain to go to the Bernabéu to watch Real Madrid-Granada, was a Barcelona fan for many years.

“Those who were Messi, never before and neither after.

That's why I now watch PSG matches, because Messi plays.

On top of that, my son is twenty-five and he loves Cristiano Ronaldo”.

And the decline of Messi?

“In Argentina there is the paradox that his first great title was won by this Messi of the sunset (which is not the sunset of a normal player, in his sunset he wins the Ballon d'Or, so that we understand each other).

Messi dazzled the world and nothing happened in the national team.

We are left – whether we say it or not – with this Messi, who is the leader of a group of younger players and is adored by his teammates.

On top of that they go and win the Copa América in Brazil and against Brazil in the final”.

Ask.

The loneliness of the goalkeeper in his goal, the place where the goal is stopped and the show is frustrated.

ungrateful job

Answer.

I was a goalkeeper when I was a teenager.

Football taught me that you have to pay costs, that you have to make sacrifices.

I didn't like being a goalkeeper, but it was good.

And I wanted my friends to call me to play, to let me know when there was a game.

To be inside, that was the sacrifice: to be a goalkeeper.

When I grew up and felt more solid as a person and not depend on that social approval, I dared to be less a witness, to be less on the periphery, and things began to happen behind my back.

Because the advantage that the goalkeeper has is that there is nothing behind.

He sees everything: he feels that he is in control.

It's a lie, but he feels that he is in control.

P.

There are few happy adolescents.

R.

And add the Argentine adolescence.

We had come from decades of military coups, the banning of political parties, elections, new governments, a new military coup… The last Peronist experience, before the military coup, had also been horrendous, with the left-wing Peronists killing each other with the right-wing Peronists.

In 1982, the Malvinas war.

It was not the defeat that was humiliating, but the anticipation of the defeat.

It was a party country, the country of war.

Q.

They were selling the victory.

R.

The Malvinas thing is an impressive thing.

It is a war of 70 days, of which the first 65 were happy.

P.

And 1986 comes and England appears again, but on a football field.

R.

Maradona in Mexico was a reparation.

Because Argentina became world champion in 1978, but… There is something like repentance, almost an act of religious contrition.

And in 1986 this thing about Argentina playing well in another country, with which there is no possible favoritism... And that Maradona in style, the unrepeatable player.

And on top of this, which seems like a narrative trap, that they have to play against England four years after the war.

And Alfonsín, the president, telling Maradona and his people: "There you have the balcony of the Government House."

Alfonsín does not come out.

I can't help but highlight it: the guy could have risen to that popularity.

He is a president hacked by economic crises, by the military, by trials for human rights.

A guy saying, "There's the balcony," and he stays behind.

Q.

You say that 1983 was an opening year.

R.

Your adults, who spoke to you now about the Constitution and the elections, were the ones who the previous year spoke to you about warrior values, discipline, authority and death for the country.

And your fifteen-year-old head said: "I don't know."

It was an extremely interesting world, but also very disturbing.

If adolescence is in itself distressing, lonely and arid, add that very screwed-up historical context.

P.

You, the adolescents of that time, did not turn out so badly.

R.

It is our great achievement as a country.

I am usually very critical of Argentina, but wait a moment: we are cutting fifty years from a perverse century;

From the year 1983 to here there have always been elections.

Even in the economic collapse of 2001, it never occurred to anyone to knock on the door of a barracks and say: "Please, military, save us."

And I think that, in a country that has very little to be proud of, in terms of its collective achievements… We have responded quite well to what the young people have been demanding of us.

We are not a generation resistant to change and ultramontane in its response.

Sometimes I argue with my children, who are in their twenties, and I tell them: "Let's see when it's your turn to have a generation behind you that questions you if you are that flexible and if you have that ability to adapt."

Today's youth sometimes look like a bunch of Quakers.

Saying this with all due respect for the Quakers.

But: you talk to me about tolerance, and you are a machine for downloading a creed for me!

P.

Federico Benítez, the protagonist of your book, grows looking back, and changes when he remembers, in the middle of his trip, all that past.

R.

It helps to tell it.

Among other things because we talked about that horrible thing that is a long trip with teenagers.

He tells it because he has to explain to his angry children why they are taking such a ridiculous trip.

And before that trip, Federico has made this respectable decision: "The past hurts me too much, I better bury it."

Naming it is opening it, naming it is making it hurt again.

P.

It happens a lot in your generation.

Shut up, I mean.

R.

Because telling our children our old pains sounds like not protecting them.

I think it's wrong, but it's something like “I cover you and feed you and I worry to see what time you arrive at night.

I'm not telling you this because I'm going to make you sad."

P.

Of the general functioning of the world, of the complete version.

R.

Probably telling our defeats, our faults, is also a way for our children to explain our defects a little better, or certain ridiculous insistences.

It seems to me that Federico does it because he has no other choice, because they are traveling and because he has something to say about that stupid trip.

But it is true that telling it repairs it.

P.

Also to you as an author?

R.

That soulless, difficult adolescence, far from any nostalgia, because personally and collectively, what should I tell?

"When I was a teenager I was a hero."

No: he was one more desperate to be seen, desperate to be liked by his friends and admired by girls and he wasn't.

But he dreamed of playing soccer, I don't know if he could achieve it, but he could get me a little closer, and that's why he played soccer, that's why he was a goalkeeper.

Q.

And in the background, your country.

A.

I wrote this book mainly in 2019, before the pandemic;

Argentina had its new presidential elections and it ended up signifying the return of Kirchnerism to power.

I feel like the last time we jumped over a maze wall was in 1983, when we had no hope at all.

So, what was the great opportunity of my country?

When we chose Alfonsín.

Actually, this is not about Alfonsín, but about what happens in a school, while far away Alfonsín is campaigning for him.

But I liked generating that tribute and coming back.

P.

There is another very visible protagonist in the book, Patagonia.

R.

Had I driven through Patagonia?

Yes. Had he driven 3,000 kilometers in four days in the dead of winter with a car that was not prepared?

No, he hadn't.

Doing it and also doing it alone had this: what are they seeing?

Fewer and fewer trees, less and less green, more and more wind, more and more ice.

Patagonia is very symbolic in Argentina.

You have to think of it as a huge uncharted desert.

It is not like in Spain, where there are regions that become a desert because the young leave and the old die.

Patagonia is a place without people always, because the aborigines were only in the friendliest part of Patagonia.

The rest was empty.

So there is something like “rich Patagonia” and “Patagonia is going to save us”.

Years go by and Patagonia does not save us nor will it save us.

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