Benito has just turned nine years old and the people gathered in a children's room in Buenos Aires surround him to sing to him.
"Give it, give it champion!", shout those present.
With Lionel Messi's number 10 shirt on his back, Benito has yet to blow out the candles on a cake.
He first he lifts the World Cup.
Celebrating in January, in the middle of the southern summer, could be sad for children who have a birthday in the middle of the end-of-year holidays.
But, one month after the victory of the Argentine team in the World Cup in Qatar, there is very little sadness in the country of the champions.
The Argentines still do not show signs of shaking off the joy of the victory on December 18 against France.
"I would like to raise the cup for real one day," says Benito after blowing out the candles on his cake, which is a soccer ball.
“This was my best birthday ever.”
Birthdays imitating the celebration of Argentine players with the World Cup has become a trend in Argentina.
In recent weeks, boys and girls from all over the country and even 78-year-old men have done it.
In a video that went viral on Tuesday, an older man surrounded by his family also raises the cup dressed in a black cape, imitating the traditional bisht from the Arab world that was placed on Messi when he lifted the cup in Qatar.
The World Cup euphoria has not only invaded birthdays.
The beaches are full of commemorative tattoos and towels with the faces of the players.
Parties, barbecues and many street gatherings cannot end without singing the World Cup anthem that toured the world: “Boys, now we are excited again”.
And on the street, in the midst of the heat waves that hit Buenos Aires, many people still choose to wear the shirt of the Argentine team.
Some are already wearing the one that commemorates the victory last December with the three World Cup stars.
And there is no taboo with wearing a fake one: Adidas, the brand that dresses the Argentine team, released the official garment on December 26 and only sells it in its online store, although today it is sold out and the first batch it was sold in just three hours.
at 22.
999 pesos – about 125 dollars at the official exchange rate – the world champion's shirt costs a third of the minimum wage.
but one
trout
is available in almost any corner at 10% of the price of the original.
Lionel Messi's face traced in a corn plantation in Los Cóndores, on the outskirts of Córdoba, on January 15, 2023. AGUSTIN MARCARIAN (REUTERS)
"What a beautiful madness we live during all this time that we ended up lifting the Cup that we all wanted so much," Lionel Messi wrote this Wednesday to commemorate the victory on his Instagram account.
“Thank God for so much.
As I said, I knew you were going to give it to me, said the Argentine captain.
"What I could not imagine was after having achieved it and I was not wrong, because I could never have imagined the madness of the people at the festivities."
Millions of Argentines paralyzed the city of Buenos Aires for two days after the World Cup victory.
It was an atypical December for the Argentine capital, accustomed to releasing the tension of the permanent economic crisis at the end of the year: since the corralito of December 2001, the beginning of summer is the moment in which unions demand adjustments to match wages with inflation and the luckiest receive bonuses or prepare vacations by increasing spending.
By the middle of this January, while the Government has just announced the repurchase of more than 1,000 million dollars of foreign debt to stop the bleeding between the official dollar and the one sold on the street, the foreseeable conflict has not yet loomed.
The country expects a return to normality in February, when the holidays are over, with the highest inflation since 1991 – 94.8% in 2022 –, an open war for the reform of Justice between the Government and the Judiciary, and the start of the electoral campaign for the general elections in October of this year.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS America
newsletter
and receive all the latest news from the region
