Why is it infinite?

The two teams from my town celebrate, simultaneously, one hundred years.

Visiting to honor them, I rediscover football in its purest form, the one I dreamed of as a child and today I remember with nostalgia.

A football that I know is infinite because it never ceases to surprise us;

because it has the capacity to renew our illusions;

because in its realm, which is the whole world, the sun never sets.

But also because, although he has a strong sense of immediacy, he needs memories and anticipation.

I like to say that football is the product of a long journey from memory (past), through emotion (present), to the always unfathomable dreams (future).

History and the idealization of nostalgia fit into memory.

There we rediscover childhood, from the opening of an envelope of trading cards, to an unforgettable goal at recess, or the first time we saw or played a real game.

Soccer is therapeutic precisely because it frees the child we were and with whom I am reunited these days.

We are talking about a wild, primitive, simple and complex game at the same time.

But it contains accumulated knowledge and be careful with whoever despises it.

For those who lack memory and do not respect their history, football awaits them in the least expected corner to stab them.

As for emotion, which links us to the present, it has a great sense of impact because it moves high and low passions from three points of support: the sense of belonging, the uncertainty of the result and the artistic possibility.

The sense of belonging is a set of things that happen to us in childhood and becomes an unbreakable act of loyalty.

Football is part of our cultural identity and is rooted both in attachment to a place and to traditions.

The truth is that both those who play and those who watch feel representative of something: the school, the neighbourhood, the city, the country... The strength of identity is so great that our club can be bought by a Russian and the team be made up of only foreigners, but the strength of the shield will remain intact.

The result is what leads us to shout: “Referee, time”, when our team is winning, or to ask: “How do we get out?”, if we didn't see the game.

Implicit in both expressions is the terrifying uncertainty of the outcome.

Finally, the artistic possibility.

Football has always created a link between beauty and the popular classes.

Many people who have not had access to theater, movies or reading, can feel an aesthetic satisfaction in a dribble, a pass or a goal.

Beauty is a possibility that never exceeds and that helps us pay the ticket for the next game.

If we see an original and precise play or if we are facing an open and emotional match, everything intensifies: the ball is rounder, the player is a better player, football is more football.

Reason enough to consider aesthetic passion as one of the great engines of this game.

Finally, we are left with dreams.

Those of the child who wants to be a player, those of the player who wants to be adored by the fans, those of the fan who wants to enjoy himself as if he were a child again.

Dreams are the hope and the threat that are put to work from the end of a game until the next one begins.

No matter the result, honor will always have something to confirm or amend in the next encounter.

In that illusion lives the soul of football.

From my town, which is the starting point, everything is easier to see.

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