A week without consolation in Argentina

Argentina did not sleep on the eve of their debut in the World Cup and ended up dragging insomnia throughout the week.

On Monday night, hours before the next morning's game against Saudi Arabia, Buenos Aires was breathing New Year's Eve: the grills were lit, the sweets in the bakeries ran out, and thousands of people decided to pass by until the next day.

The decision of the schools to postpone classes until after the World Cup premiere seemed to reach 45 million Argentines.

On Tuesday at nine in the morning, after its worst defeat in World Cup history, the country not only had to go to work.

He also had to face the fear that the team that has generated the most enthusiasm in the last 20 years will end in failure.

Now the anxiety is set in the game this Saturday against Mexico, a rival that Argentina beat the three times they met in the World Cup, but with a complicated team in qualifying for the next phase and the national spirit for the soil is better not to underestimate.

Always hostage to the epic, Argentina has spent the last four years finding coincidences that would ensure that this World Cup would be theirs;

Last week he concentrated on finding those responsible for the defeat.

The country's football success does not depend only on the size of his talent, it is also tied to his superstition.

Before the fall against Saudi Arabia, theories arose: the movie

was released in 1986 – the same year that Maradona lifted the Cup in Mexico – and Tom Cruise returned it to the cinema with its sequel in 2022;

Canada qualified for its last World Cup in 1986 and only returned in 2022;

Maradona won in Mexico 86 after leaving Barcelona... just like Messi months ago.

The cabal, that lucky coincidence that ensures success, shares the axis with the mufa, the premonition of bad luck.

After the defeat, Argentina forgot about coincidences and started a hunt.

Was it the fans who traveled to Qatar and did not encourage enough?

Argentina was one of the countries that requested the most tickets on the FIFA portal, but several correspondents are convinced that international fanaticism for Messi dampens the Argentine presence in the stands.

Was it the fault of former president Mauricio Macri, who watched the game from the stadium because he now has a position in FIFA?

When in doubt, more than 30,000 people have signed an online petition for Macri not to attend a World Cup match again.

Was it the

who traveled to Qatar?

One of them, Martin

Martínez, had monopolized the spotlight during the elimination in Russia 2018 and this year he tried again.

Since Tuesday's defeat he has received so many violent messages that he ended up tearfully assuring that he will leave Qatar.

The illusion that Messi's team aroused was well described by columnist Guillermo Oliveto in an October article in

For an Argentina plunged into its worst economic crisis, Oliveto said, the national team was an inverted mirror: they had a happy Messi, a united group and defined starting players.

Something that finally works well in the country and unites absolutely all Argentines.

But that team, which won the Copa América last year after an 18-year drought and went undefeated in 36 games in more than three years, also began to question itself.

Argentina has five television stations, three radio stations and an incalculable number of journalists broadcasting the World Cup from Qatar.

The discussion of these days was concerned with three issues: if the annulled goals that would have written another story were invalidated correctly;

if Messi is fit to play after training on his own a couple of times;

if the team that until last week was untouchable should change.

"We are evaluating looking for alternatives to our game, but not to our way of playing," the Argentine coach said this Friday at a press conference.

But doubts persist.

Many Argentines wonder if Rodrigo de Paul, Messi's usual partner in the national team, has his head set on the Cup or on his new partner;

if Lisandro Martínez, a figure in the Manchester United defense, is perhaps not too new to this group to be a starter;

if Messi, who arrived in Qatar with great confidence, the defeat has given him back the chip of believing that he "doesn't give it" when he plays with Argentina.

“Guys, now we are excited again”, says one of the songs that Argentines sing the most these days, both in Buenos Aires and in Qatar.

She is also Messi's favorite, as she revealed in one of the many interviews that the Argentine media did to her in the weeks before the World Cup.

The illusion of winning the cup, that desire that many Argentines still do not dare to voice so as not to call bad luck, has been suspended in the air until this Saturday.

The match with Mexico, just the second, will be a final.

But, as Messi reminded all the journalists who made a pilgrimage to Paris before the World Cup: "The first thing we need is calm."

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