I don't think it's a statistical issue,
but the numbers hint at something
.
Argentina ranks fifth among the countries with the most professional clubs (103) below Mexico (266), Brazil (130), Turkey (126) and England (111), and fourth in number of professional players (3,920). behind Mexico (9,753), Brazil (9,177) and England (5,935), according to the FIFA Professional Football Report 2019.
Something happens to us with the ball and with the twenty-two
who fight for her to obey them.
It is also true that not everyone, nor with the same intensity, but even for the most indifferent, football is more than just a sport.
It is an element present in literature, humor, music, everyday language and our culture in general.
Lionel Messi of the Argentina national team kisses the World Cup and holds the trophy for the best player of the World Cup, on December 18, 2022, in Lusail, Qatar (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
In addition, Buenos Aires is the city with the most soccer stadiums in the world (18), reaching 61 if the metropolitan area is considered;
of which 31 have a capacity for more than 10,000 people, according to the historian Julio Frydenberg to El Grito del Sur in his note dated July 12, 2022. As for the history, the Argentine Football Association, founded in 1893 by the Scottish Alexander Hutton, is the oldest on the continent and the eighth in the world.
Without considering the ephemeral Argentine Association Football League of 1891 that would disappear in just 11 months -so as not to lose that old refoundational mania that we like so much-.
I confess that
in my family we are not soccer fans
.
Except for a grandfather who, according to my father, catapulted the radio into the middle of the field when River lost.
At home, football never kept us awake.
And, therefore, I did not have "the code" -for the centennials: an antique that expanded the cable channels and cost a kidney-, I did not go to the field, I accepted the jokes of the rival on duty without anger in case of defeat , I barely looked at the sports supplement of La Nueva Provincia and, to top it off, I had two cobblestones per foot.
The World Cup after Argentina's victory over France in the final, on Sunday, December 18, 2022, in Lusail, Qatar.
With time and friends I became more interested, I began to "understand" something, to go to Carminatti, to get moderately annoyed with defeats and I even got to play without being a disgrace to my team on the five-point court.
However,
there was an exception: when Argentina played.
I don't understand why, but when the National Team plays and, especially, when the National Team plays in the World Cup,
something is activated in our physiology.
Something that exceeds the psychological
and that triggers an organic response;
perhaps forged during childhood through images of people huddled together in front of the television in the window of an electrical appliance store, of gentlemen with the leather-covered
Spica glued to their ears,
of restaurants where no one touched a bite or took their eyes off the tube television hanging on the wall, honking with each goal, little pieces of paper in the stands and the light blue and white everywhere that, like sedimentary rocks, are consolidated giving shape to our idiosyncrasy
.
Lionel Messi holds up the World Cup trophy after Argentina's victory over France in the final, Sunday, December 18, 2022, in Lusail, Qatar.
Thus, for something as irrelevant as a ball and despite having sufficient socioeconomic reasons for not being one, on December 18 we
suffered, we were moved and, finally, we were happy.
As is logical, since obtaining the long-awaited third title, the chronicles about the sporting feat, the work of the National Team players and their coach, and the desired match between
Lionel Messi and the World Cup
have flooded the press and the networks social.
Less logical have been the rivers of ink and the fields of blackened pixels to discuss interested, petty and even irrational concepts.
Especially the pull that politics, like a marriage in divorce, has exerted on the figure of Messi and the National Team through clumsy literary pirouettes, shameful personal extrapolations and exalted jingoistic speeches against imaginary enemies trying, unsuccessfully, to bring water to a rickety windmill.
Argentina's coach Lionel Scaloni celebrates his team's victory over France in the World Cup final, on December 18, 2022, at the Lusail stadium in Qatar.
Harsh criticism has also been rained down for the mockery of the Dutch coach and players, the roughness of that match, the mockery of Mbappé, the unusual celebration of Emiliano Martínez at the award ceremony, the unnecessary outbursts and excesses during the celebrations in Argentina.
Some as disproportionate as ridiculously defended.
As if it were impossible to have a reasonable opinion and there was no room for anything outside of the antagonistic position between condemning public opprobrium or papal infallibility for the accused.
angels or demons
All typical of these times of two hundred and eighty characters and little thought.
Perhaps, when the foam of the World Cup hangover subsides, we will see on the sand that after all it is only about some boys who, not exempt from avoidable mistakes, but with talent, sacrifice and some of the necessary fortune.
Without political mud, without enemies or conspiracies and without cheap jingoism
, but with the will to represent his country.
That, with a simple ball, made us smile.
Javier Calles-Hourclé
/ javieradcalles@icloud.com
The passion, and the business of politics
Calles-Hourclé has a PhD in Materials Science and Technology from the Universidad Nacional del Sur, Valladolid, Spain.
And at the age of 42, he takes us back to those images that, although indelible,
make our hearts race and our chests swell
.
His chronicle, written from a distance, represents that symbolism that fans and not so much carry as DNA
throughout the world.
Not only because of the dulce de leche or because of
the corruption in the Government
we are known on all continents, but two words are also the key to identify us:
Maradona and Messi.
Now another important date is approaching, not because of the weight of the game
but because of the emotion.
As much as it is a friendly, it will be like reliving that match against France that
catapulted us into the stratosphere
.
But it has another flavor because the match will be played in Argentina, and that gives it that
"I don't know what"
the reader says.
So, after winning the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, on Thursday the 23rd, the Albiceleste will face Panama in River,
and there will be 80,000 spectators.
However, this will not be the only match for the national team, as a couple of days later, on Tuesday March 28, they will receive Curaçao, a Central American team that is currently ranked 86th in the FIFA ranking, at the Madre stadium. of Cities of Santiago del Estero.
And here, a separate paragraph, we must talk about
the controversy that unleashed the sale of tickets.
More than 2 million people were in front of their computer or their cell phone trying to get one of the "between 40 and 50 thousand tickets" that were put up for sale virtually through the Deportick site, awarded to Marcela Viviana Faroni
,
deputy Provincial of the Frente de Todos in the Buenos Aires Legislature and represents the militancy of the Frente Renovador founded by Sergio Massa to confront Kirchnerism.
Politics sticking its tail in the passion of multitudes.
look too
The most human right of all: "Make mistakes and learn from mistakes"
look too
"The Government does not help us, it asks us to put on the K shirt, but dignity is not for sale"