When Argentina wanted to rescue the princess

I write these somewhat stupid lines with Qatar-Ecuador in the background;

Infantino has already spoken, who in the previous days not only wanted to convince the world that he had hair, but that his hair was red.

And that this caused him serious discrimination, therefore no one can give him lessons about what women and gays are going through in Qatar: if he knows!

I'm sure they even called him

, like me

or

or, when he was distracted by the basketball parties, Arvydas

.

In short, that Infantino was called “carrot” at recess and others are given 100 lashes before being killed if they get involved out of wedlock with a non-Muslim;

life is hell for everyone.

The nineties, in addition to being rich in nicknames, was the time when I liked football the most.

How would the passion be that I even saw the opening match of the World Cup in Italy, Cameroon-Italy.

I remember it perfectly because it was the month of June and Frigo ice cream arrived at my grandfather's bar (the 90s were Frigo's

).

The Cameroonians came out unleashed against Maradona: they sewed him up with kicks, there was one that reached chest height.

Goal by Omam Biyik with a header while the Argentine defense applauded him, sung by Pumpido.

Argentina's pre-game was wonderful: Bilardo said that if they didn't pass the first phase, in the middle of the flight he would give the pilot a parachute and he would be in charge of crashing the plane.

Bilardo himself was in charge of blowing up the opening game by removing Caniggia and Troglio from the eleven because, doing his particular military inspection of the rooms at dawn, one night, at three, he found the two very addicted playing

_

Bilardo must have thought that it is one thing to be addicted to cocaine and another, what we lacked, to the console.

Troglio and Caniggia played Mario Bros

five hours a day

.

Bilardo flung open the door and Troglio, quick, still had time to throw away the remote control and pretend to be asleep;

Caniggia also closed his eyes, but sitting on the bed with the remote in his hand.

The best?

Troglio's explanations 30 years later on the Líbero radio station: “The saddest thing about that game is that now if you reach phase four you can start over from there if you die, it's crazy, because it took us years and years to get there.

In that World Cup we reached phase 15 to rescue the princess, it was spectacular ”.

They still believed that if they rescued the princess they would give them the Cup. Troglio, by the way, is the author of one of the anecdotes that best defines Bilardo.

Before the World Cup, the coach went to visit the players at his house.

He made Troglio take a cactus out of his building because, according to Bilardo, it was bad luck.

She would be back in a month and she didn't want to see him there, she told him.

The cactus belonged to the goalkeeper.

Troglio cut it up and threw it away.

Bilardo did not appear in life.

After a vague memory of France-Senegal in 2002 that I didn't see but I do remember, I have no idea who played any opening game of something, which is the most dispensable game in a tournament (although it seems necessary).

In such a way that I just remembered that I was in one, in the debut of Brazil in São Paulo in its World Cup, and still not completely sure I just went to Google to confirm that I was there with

and that I wrote a piece .

I mean: the opening matches are invisible matches, they have the mysterious ability to raise a lot of expectations and be quickly buried by the rest of the Cup;

parties doomed to exist before the initial whistle: then everything is dust and oblivion.

While I have just written these dignified lines, Enner Valencia has scored his third goal (the first was canceled by the Emir of Qatar) and thanks to Twitter I find his amazing story: wanted by the Police to be arrested for not paying the pension of his daughter, the agents showed up before a national team match and allowed him to play and then arrested him;

Valencia faked an injury, they took him out on a stretcher pursued by the Police and asked to leave the stadium… by ambulance so they wouldn't take him away in the van.

The first goal-scoring hero of the World Cup is up to the circumstances of this Cup.

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