I forgot how to shout goals

The trade killed my passion for football.

Last week, the European Championship took me to see Brighton's stadium.

England played against Spain, but that was the least of it.

When I got to my desk I took a picture of the field and sent it to my nephew Valentín.

We have that custom, kill distance with football.

“Do you like it?” he asked me.

“New”, I replied.

I see modern stadiums like the little dances on TikTok: they all look the same to me.

Or worse, like the ostentatious cities of the Persian Gulf.

They are impressive and there will even be those who find them beautiful.

For me, photocopies.

Instead, I was captivated by the decrepit San Paolo (Naples) and its nooks and crannies where you feel like you can reproduce Maradona's footsteps in Asif Kapadia's documentary;

I am still amazed by the Südtribüne, the south stand of the Borussia Dortmund stadium that has nothing to envy to the mythical Bombonera (Boca);

day to day does not make the giant Camp Nou small for me;

and I find the combination of old and new at Anfield (Liverpool) and Old Trafford (United) magical.

I closed the conversation with my nephew, put my phone away, and tried to visualize England-Spain.

You can see that he had a worried face (I swear he wasn't) because an English journalist asked me: “

"I'm not argentinian.

He gives me the same, ”I replied.

The minichat, however, made me a little funny.

A few minutes before, in the work room of the stadium, he had had another, much longer, with the English colleague, correspondent for

in Madrid, Sid Lowe.

The same question had been asked of him on a Spanish radio before Liverpool-Villarreal in the last Champions League.

“Are you nervous?” they said.

The problem, for Sid, was that he was participating in the gathering as a journalist and not as a Liverpool fan.

We agree that both in Argentina and in England journalistic patriotism was only accepted with the national teams and we were outraged (a little) with the institutionalization of flag journalism.

The talk ended as our talks always end.

"Why are you

from Liverpool if

London?" I asked.

He answered me with the same enthusiasm as the first time.

"My older brother, a fan of Queens Park Rangers, did not want me to follow in his footsteps and invited me to choose another team that uses red for their shirts."

Good call, Sid.

I remembered my brother Martin.

One afternoon, when he was six or seven years old, I showed up at home with the firm intention of abandoning the family mandate.

"I'm not a fan of Racing anymore, now I'm from River", I let out.

I didn't even finish the sentence when the first blow fell on me.

I protested to my mother.

Her response was less violent, but just as harsh: "You

it for sold."

A little rough and without a book in hand, I understood the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano: "In his life, a man can change his wife, his political party or his religion, but he cannot change his soccer team."

When I arrived at the hotel in Brighton I struggled to revive my first football memory.

It is not on a field, nor is it a player: it is a pile of newsprint.

In the same house (my grandmother's) where superstition dictated that you have to watch Maradona's matches in Mexico 86, my uncle arrived with a pile of old newspapers so that my brothers and I could transform them into small squares, which finally between ours and those of thousands of other children-adults, they would become one of the greatest rituals of Argentine folklore: pieces of paper and pieces of paper in the wind when your team jumps onto the field.

You always had to get to the field early.

We couldn't miss the team's outing: a party of flares, balloons, streamers and songs.

And, of course, slips and slips.

In short, the party of illusion,

the most innocent of emotions.

The bitterness of the result would come.

I was struggling then to learn the songs.

Those same songs that years later made me go through a stage of disenchantment with football.

"We are going to kill all the bosteros (Boca fans)", "We bank it without irons (we resist without weapons)", he repeated in the most classic indoctrination of being a fan of the fans.

I had no plans to kill anyone and I had never touched a gun in my life.

So, I stopped going to the field.

The disagreement did not last long.

My nephews showed up and everything started again: yes or yes you have to be from Racing, previews at grandma's house (now, my mother), little pieces of paper, songs and analyzing and analyzing football during the car trip, always with our friend John Martin.

But I moved to Spain.

And everything disappeared.

Or, worse yet, it became a memory.

Journalism brought me closer and further away from football.

I don't know how long it's been since I shouted a goal.

Those goals that leave you hoarse after looking for the first note that appears on the road to hug him.

Of course, I didn't celebrate any of the goals in England's win over Spain in Brighton.

However, I realized that the trade, for now, did not destroy everything.

I enjoyed when Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline took over the nearly 30,000 people in the stands.

That communion as improvised as necessary between fans and players to sing "

" woke me up my old self.

I took out my cell phone again, this time to send my wife the celebration of the English women.

With Spain out of the Euro, I got rid of going to the Wembley final.

The great temple of world football has become a modern and impersonal stadium.

A business fetish in which sooner or later Shakira will appear singing at halftime.

Piqué will no longer be in the stands.

And my passion for that football either.

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