the posthuman condition

Luis Suárez from Uruguay cries at the end of the match between Ghana and Uruguay, Alberto Estevez (EFE)

Dear Martin:

I make a football gesture of the future: a digital click.

We have arrived at a posthuman sport!

The goal with which Japan defeated Spain was an abuse of technology.

Those of us who only have eyes saw the ball leave the field in the previous play, but the hidden sensor in the Adidas plastics perceived something that surpasses the most rigorous of ophthalmologists.

Welcome to the sensitivity of machines!

It was up to the country of ultramodernity and Zen Buddhism to score a goal that depended on the combined designs of a chip on the ball and prayers in the stands.

Beyond this set, Japan deserved to shout "banzai!".

Without appealing to individual technique, the team led by Hajime Moriyasu unfolds like a fast origami, occupying all sectors of the field.

In their first game, Spain had fallen into the sin of strength.

The merciless beating of Costa Rica burned too much artillery.

After the Maracanazo, the insurmountable Nelson Rodrigues attributed Brazil's unexpected defeat against Uruguay to the previous win: "We lost the World Cup because a few days before we beat the Spanish in an almost immoral way."

In the same vein, Manuel Jabois wrote a few days ago in these pages: "The 7-0 in the opening matches engender monsters that turn against one another, leaving the teams in a happy heroin-addicted stupor."

The draw with Germany did not help them methadone and then they faced Japan, which plays with a PlayStation dynamic.

The posthuman boasts of this World Cup confirm my late conversion to Christianity.

Ever since his cyborg moniker, CR7 seemed to live for numbers.

Everything about him was statistics: his billion-dollar fortune, his ability to shoot from 2.63 meters high, his 500 million followers on Instagram.

Nobody can deny him athletic merits, but we hardly saw him as an officiant of magic.

Now, the record collector cries with the Portuguese anthem, points to the sky when scoring in memory of his dead son, refuses to support the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, speaks openly about his depression and laughs like a child at the cartoon what he did to the furious Pepe.

Just when the sport becomes robotized, Cristiano shows an assortment of surprisingly human reactions.

I turn to a psychological trait that is cultivated in your country as much as soybeans: the affection of the winners.

You regret, like many Argentine friends, that the albiceleste did not score another goal to help Mexico.

In addition to beating us, they wanted us to thank them for qualifying!

Messi had that goal in his boots, but he took the penalty as if he had put his left foot in the fridge.

It is human that philanthropy is based on a feeling of superiority, in the same way that it is human for us Mexicans to send those who try to mitigate the pleasure of being masters of our defeat to hell.

Let's celebrate these outbursts before the audience is replaced by virtual fans!

I conclude with a couple of reactions that machines will never show.

Fernando Santos, Portugal's veteran coach, is the perfect embodiment of saudade.

When his team scores, he is saddened with happiness.

Instead, misfortune makes him furious.

He was able to sense the strength of South Korea and went from melancholy to screams of death rattle.

His anger announces defeat and his taciturn countenance, the bitter taste of triumph.

Another veteran, Luis Suárez, gave a good game without knowing that it would be his last in the World Cups.

He left the field when Uruguay was classified.

On the bench he found out about the agonizing goal from South Korea that changed things.

From that moment on, he starred in a high-impact psychodrama, showing that a star can be the most passionate of fans.

We saw him cry, curse the referee, bite his shirt, see his teammates as if they were suicidal lemmings on the edge of the cliff.

Suárez will go down in history for his supernatural ability to finish off the goal, but also for his contradictory human qualities.

In South Africa 2010 he saved a goal with his hand, in Brazil 2014 he bit the Italian Chiellini, in Qatar 2022 he was the most long-suffering fan of his team.

It is possible that the future will bring devices from which design tears flow.

That cry will never reach the tragic force with which Luis Suárez said goodbye to the World Cups.

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