Zidane warms up

I confess that I have followed this end of the season, this final fireworks of national team football, with a certain distance, perhaps with a feeling similar to that of Bernardo Silva when, after the match against Spain, he confessed with kind discrepancy that these four final matches They were excessive for him in a season that was already busy, and even more so coming from all the trauma of covid, which seems to be a distant past replaced by the price of gas, the heatwave, the war in Ukraine or whatever happens in Andalusia this weekend.

But we forget the effort that all athletes have made training in complex conditions, traveling in bubbles that, from time to time, lost air, in an environment of uncertainty that was added to the always disconcerting and usual in the field of sport itself.

The prize for many of those soccer players, surely the chosen ones of this sport, has been this start of the League of Nations that seems to me, excuse those sensitive for the comparison, like those Super Cups, the one in Spain or the one in Europe is worth the same to me to the World Cup in Club World Cup format;

those tournaments that when you win them don't give you much, one more Cup, one more emblem on the shirt that doesn't make it sell more, it just personalizes it over time, a photo under the streamers and the glitter that makes an impact as long as it takes fall to the ground and are already past being present.

One of those competitions that give little and can take away a lot.

Let's look at the trajectory of Spain, which went from drawing against Portugal to putting itself at risk in Prague -here the tournament was a preparation for the World Cup-, to end up straightening the matter with victories against Switzerland and the Czech Republic in Malaga, to finish first in the group and, now, to be able to aspire to a final phase that would give them the possibility of competing for a cup.

To teach someone else a lesson, it would be good to watch France, the current world champion, who finished this series in last place in their group, full of doubts, with football criticism in style because yes, I confirm, criticism is also made in France to the teams, the players and their coaches, and those who are emblems and champions become fodder for the thick words that they usually attack, above all, the issues that have to do with self-indulgence, what they call, free translation, “sweat the shirt”.

Do you want another example?

That 0-4 that Hungary endorsed England in Wolverhampton that sent the

to the last corner of the classification and their leaders to the corner of thinking about whether to continue trusting their coach or, on the contrary, provoke a government crisis, of those how accustomed he is to generating and managing his prime minister, Boris Johnson, and changing his coach, Gareth Southgate, now that there seems to be time to correct course before the World Cup in Qatar.

It may be that in this issue of crisis management the French have a certain advantage over their neighbors because it would be said, an open secret, that the French Federation has the substitute for Didier Deschamps

up in the band and, in addition, that type of name Zinedine , oh surprise, it is not just any profile, but one of those that fulfills the sports part, that of myth and is capable of putting aside landing in Paris to choose to ask for a runway in Clairefontaine, a few kilometers from the capital.

So far, so close.

As much as Paris of Marseille.

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