Because I like football?

This must have been many years ago, because it was the last century, the last millennium, it was when I had hair.

When the recess bell rang, we all went out in a rush to enjoy the town square, my town, Aretxabaleta, that, for me, immense patio in which the first one to arrive chose a team to get involved in an endless half hour of the most intense of the matches that I have never played.

Everything was played there every day, a sweaty smile at the end of recess meant that we had won, a grimace of disgust meant that the next game was the good one, the final one in an endless series that began in September and ended in June, which was suspended only in case of excessive rain, which was played with what you had, or ball, or ball.

I explain.

For me there are two paradigms of ball to play soccer: the Gorilla ball and the Milk Lana ball.

And that's it.

Then came the Tangos, Etruscans, Merys, NK 350 Geos or whatever, but first they were a green rubber ball that came inside Gorilla's shoes, essential for the rain (whoever had two had a treasure), and the impressive , the incomparable, the only white plastic ball that Leche Lana (one of the first cooperatives) gave away with I don't know how many bags of its milk in the cooperative's first store (the beginning of the current Eroski).

If the Gorilla ball was a treasure, that white ball took you directly to the Olympus of the soccer gods.

It was the ball of the great challenges, of when something was

played , the one of the challenges between neighborhoods, between gangs, between whatever it was to touch that jewel.

They were the games in which he had, and should, play as goalkeeper.

They were our official matches where the main, personal titles were played, they were matches in which we were looking for a

field to play, one

.

Apozaga, Mendiola, sometimes the Olympic of the Marianists, five-star fields without a marked line, some with goals without crossbars of those that are always the goalkeeper's solution (he was tall) and the striker (he entered because he was falling), full of potholes and puddles, but for me, for us, for Imanol, Iñaki, Pelutxi, José Ramón, Félix (what a pity, he left us), the best ones to play on.

All of them within a half hour walk, which saved us from warming up because what was the point of warming up, that was to arrive, choose the teams and start playing until it got dark or the rain expelled us or one of us remembered that his mother, Always Mistress, she had set a time for her to retire at home.

Of course this

or it was announced before the game started (and it depends on who said it that cracks have existed at all times and circumstances), or it could only be argued if you were losing that if you won it sounded like an excuse to leave the game at your best (biggest loss).

It never mattered that the difference was five goals because always, always, always, the opponent was coming back and his golden minutes arrived.

And in those days in Aretxabaleta no one withdrew or took a step back.

How many fights have we earned for not being able to raise our hands and recognize that you had to leave.

Because despite the comments, what they will say, the murmurs, your mother's eyes weighed more heavily with one of those looks that you never get with your children than a humiliating defeat.

Okay, but for now we continue playing, we'll see what comes to my mind on the way back, but we finished the game yes or yes.

And there I was becoming a person, I was building my values ​​to live, I was feeling the value of friendship, I was knowing who was trustworthy and who only left when they won, I was learning how to explain broken shoes, a leaky sweater, a bruise on her face: Mistress, it's just that I couldn't leave… It was the doorman.

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