A roller coaster, sorry.

The Mexican players Carlos Rodríguez and Edson Álvarez console each other at the end of the match against Saudi Arabia.ALFREDO ESTRELLA (AFP)

Firulete for Villoro:

You lose one a day, Granjuán: yesterday your Mexican roots, today your German teachers.

And if yesterday was suspenseful, today was a roller coaster, excuse me.

The third parties accept two contrasting forms: either they are a procedure that nobody cares about or they are duels on the edge of the abyss where future soccer players dance.

In the afternoon, Belgium spent half an hour half a finger from scoring the goal that would have classified them but it did not come, in a 0-0 that denied the essence of 0-0: it was vibrant.

But the crazy was yet to come.

Spain had started so cool, so canchero: a goal in ten minutes and play.

Spain is probably the team that best moves the ball around the field: it goes, it comes, it goes, it comes, it goes, etcetera and etcetera and etcetera.

Perhaps it is not necessary to take this skill to privacy: several times the passes to the goalkeeper / goalkeeper ended in scares.

There are those who say that the principles are not negotiated;

others call it fundamentalism.

That's what the red ones were in when a scare turned into a disaster and the Japanese sent them to keep it.

And in that they continued when they scored the second, the goal that pierces the nets of all the VARs on this planet: in the replays, we all saw the ball leave the field except those who had to decide it, and they decided that it had not happened.

From that moment the festival began: in the half hour that followed each of the four was classified at some point, each of the four was out.

Everyone depended on everyone, it was impossible not to look at both at the same time.

It was a curious spectacle: one that almost justifies the multiplication of screens.

In the end, Germany did for Spain what Spain did not do for Germany: win and allow them to enter.

In other words, for the second time in a row Germany, the great power, the perpetual champion, the one that stole the last two finals from us, is left out of a World Cup in the group stage.

In Russia one could understand: what Hitler did not understand Beckenbauer could not understand.

In Qatar it is rarer: he will have to find the meaning of it.

Whatever it is, two World Cups in a row without Germany in the serious games are a pleasure that is difficult to match.

Schadenfreude, mein freund, pure Schadenfreude.

(And the hypothesis that a championship with such absolute dominance is not the best way to build your team. A hypothesis that could collapse if the French Republic…)

Meanwhile, Spain fell to Morocco.

The fall of Spain is tumultuous: he started as the great scorer and no longer knows how to approach the goal.

He touches, touches, touches, he can't find a way to break.

I believe that, as used to happen in so many fields, Spain lacks what France has in abundance: talent for aggression.

It will not be easy – and Morocco has now become the last unanimous Arab hope, the stadiums roaring at their breath.

The penalty is yesterday: Mexico outside, premature.

Someone proposed that the best remedy for the "fifth game sickness" – that you always lose in that instance – was not even reaching the fourth.

And you, Granjuán, it hurts for not having achieved "the miracle of being different."

It is a rare miracle: in general it is expected to remain the same: to remain healthy, to remain alive, to remain the King.

We men are so modest that we are content to continue.

But you, instead, ask for the opposite miracle: stop, change.

Perhaps the solution is to take advantage of what we are in another way.

Look no further at the Poles, their own miracle: they lost but they won, they learned to find victory in defeat.

If you are so convinced, as I see, that defeat is part of the Mexican essence, perhaps the way out is, Polishly,

(The closeness between Mexicans, Poles and milagros is not even capricious. If I remember correctly, both ask a dark virgin: the one from Guadalupe yours, the one from Częstochowa those who were mine so long ago. But luck Poland – the Mexica misfortune – was not only conceived by virgins. You were, in this, other victims of the invasion of Ukraine: because of it, in retaliation, Poland was given their qualifying match against Russia for granted without playing it.)

In any case, they are out for now.

They will knock again on the doors of this hell.

Me, meanwhile, I wanted to ask you, on behalf of mine, a Pharisee apology.

Pharisee because mine aren't mine and, above all, because I'm not sure it makes sense.

But it is true that there were many Argentines who yesterday, in the agony of the matches, wanted Argentina to score another little goal to save Mexico.

It was a new role: after condemning him so many times, redeeming him would have been, finally, being different.

It would have been a miracle, and we weren't.

The bad thing is that we didn't even try.

We keep the ball, we let time pass, we let them get lost.

It is almost logical: no country plays for another to thrive.

And it's sad, too, at the same time.

My apologies, then, Pharisees.

Water under the bridges, say those of your North.

Meanwhile, Argentina found itself on a royal road towards the great dream: all the teams are difficult, all the commentators say –that they are usually easier–, but Australia is less so than almost all the rest and the Orange Countries, low as they are, too.

Those would be the rivals of my lucky homeland to stand in the semifinals.

They say fortune helps the brave.

It must be true, but not only to them, apparently.

Argentina, yesterday, did not play badly against a team that did not play well or badly: they hoped they did not score too many goals.

And there is a piece of information that does give me hope: that Messi had no part in what we did to them.

That is, if there is one, the key to possible success: that Messi is not the cake, cream and cocoa but the icing on the cake.

If Argentina gets it, he even has his chances.

Where magic lives, everything lives.

I'll leave you, then, with your tequila or with your schnapps.

You will have noticed that I had to change your treatment.

I apologize, but the rules are the rules.

Your Excellency was appropriate as long as you were from some playing country.

Now, that no longer, you are Granjuán again, my defeated friend, always so victorious, so loved.

Hugs,

Clarification:

Excuse me, but it says "it's noisy."

The nonsense of our daily life, give it to us today.

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