homelands in balls

Julián Álvarez, forward of Argentina, controls the ball during a training session in Doha.RUNGROJ YONGRIT (EFE)

Stopped ball:

Today, Granjuán, as is obvious, there are no games: it is a day to stop and think;

perhaps it was better that it were not.

There is something in this World Cup –or in my way of living it– that worries me.

I like soccer, you know it.

I have been watching football for almost 60 years –well, Boca– and my first comments in Goals magazine were published in 1974, when almost no one had been born yet.

The World Cups should exalt me: they are the great assembly or the great mall of powerful football.

But this time, I don't know if for the first time, there is something in the hypocrisy and soccer nationalism that I find difficult to swallow.

A digital medium here, usually serious, this morning titled its edition with

.

Could a soccer team really have betrayed "the whole country"?

Do we believe those things?

Don't we suppose that a country betrays itself by ruining the lives of its citizens, not failing two or three penalties?

At this point I almost envy you that your team has been left out and you can, eventually, see dribbles and passes and saves – not challenges to the honor and greatness of your country.

You no longer have, but I still have a country in the dispute.

And I hope – of course, because I was always like that – that Argentina win as much as possible.

But when I see the level of tension, intolerance and absoluteness that the subject is reaching among my people, my desire withers as on those nights that it is better to forget.

The Homeland, what are we going to do, don't piss me off.

But I had the bad idea to tweet it.

And there jumped the crouched ones who only wait for the moment to vomit their bile, and they did: how dare I call the players of the national team "mercenaries", what a mercenary I was, asshole, corrupt, old whore, disgusting larva and that I die soon.

Always with that level of pathetic exaltation that these brave hidden paladins assume – who, moreover, were echoed by various newspapers that we assumed to be serious, a big mistake.

It's a trifle but it's also an example of the climate I was trying to tell you: little things about the Homeland Effect.)

disgusting larva and may I die soon.

Always with that level of pathetic exaltation that these brave hidden paladins assume – who, moreover, were echoed by various newspapers that we assumed to be serious, a big mistake.

It's a trifle but it's also an example of the climate I was trying to tell you: little things about the Homeland Effect.)

disgusting larva and may I die soon.

Always with that level of pathetic exaltation that these brave hidden paladins assume – who, moreover, were echoed by various newspapers that we assumed to be serious, a big mistake.

It's a trifle but it's also an example of the climate I was trying to tell you: little things about the Homeland Effect.)

Beyond silly – isn't the word “silly” nice? – I am concerned about these countries dedicated to their soccer teams as they are dedicated to almost nothing else.

Could it be that the only causes that can unite us are the slaps of an archer?

The too-full World Cup illuminates the surrounding emptiness: we don't know how to find this emotion in almost anything and we look for it, vicariously, in the kicks of some right-handed or sinister boys.

I feel sorry for it in general – and in particular coming from a country that boasts of doing it more than any other.

But also here, in Spain, today we see something similar, although less dramatized, less tango.

Some are even capable of reading the perfect parable of Achraf Hakimi, that son of very poor Moroccan parents – he a street vendor, she a domestic worker – born in Getafe, a poor suburb of Madrid, who was the one who nailed the clincher for his parents' team last penalty.

Hakimi is just one of the 14 Moroccan national teams who were not born in his country – but in Europe, in their host countries – but play in the team that did pay attention to them.

Moroccans are the largest immigrant community here – around 700,000, they say – and what happened yesterday was revenge against so many years of exploitation and mistreatment.

A rematch that will last a few days and will not end, more to go, with mistreatment or exploitation.

Football deceptions are numerous.

Anyway, Granjuán, don't let me get carried away by these bitterness.

To leave them behind, and for now, I will tell you that it seems that this cup marks the end of several races that have excited us over the years –Cristiano, Hazard, Suárez, Busquets, who knows Messi– and of certain teams that are so-called dominant that are not now. –Germany, Spain, Belgium, Uruguay– and a form of play –passismo, childhood disease of guardiolismo– that failed wildly.

And the beginning of who knows what.

Surely you can tell us.

Here I wait for you, eagerly.

Hugs

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