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Argentina 7, Brazil 1

2022-12-09T23:39:27.928Z


The Argentine writer Martín Caparrós and the Mexican Juan Villoro maintain a correspondence throughout the tournament and confirm that the ball also knows a lot about friendship


The players of Argentina celebrate the pass to the semifinals, this Friday. MANAN VATSYAYANA (AFP)

Penalty to Villoro:

Yes, it seemed like a new Argentina.

Do you remember, Granjuán, what I told you a few days ago about the silver style?

That way of always looking for suffering, of believing that nothing can be obtained without pain?

I spent a long time tonight wondering if I hadn't been too terrifying – because I wasn't.

Tonight it seemed like a new Argentina.

Or, at least, a new Argentine team.

He controlled his game calmly, he had a two-goal advantage because he had kicked three times on target – one from a penalty – and had reached.

And Messi played like Messi and it was so nice and Acuña flourished and even Molina put it in and the defense was iron and everyone slightly disdained the Netherlands, so little, so mediocre.

Do you remember, Granjuán, what I told you a few days ago about the two parties, the split reality?

Tonight was the same but worse.

Until 75 minutes, the two played one in the current way, very rallied in the middle, with that caution that we do not call fear, with the intention that everything go smoothly until someone -preferably the opposite- makes a mistake or someone -preferably their own – His name is Messi and he lights up.

In that game, Argentina prevailed calmly.

In that hour and a quarter, Argentina seemed like a team: supportive, firm, convinced of its possibilities.

Until he believed it so much that he stopped being it.

After their second goal, the boys began to play as if their only enemy was time and they could just let it go by;

total those orange boys could play six and a half hours without putting it in.

And, of course, as always when someone believes himself too much –an Argentine believes himself too much– night fell on us: we could never give three passes again and in fifteen minutes they put two pepas in us and we suffered again: to cut nails with our tongues .

To see the storm clouds again, the storm, the precipice: to touch failure again with your fingers.

Those game endings – today, the other day with Australia – are, excuse me,

like that of the rich country that has everything to prosper and sinks again and again into misery.

For more than half an hour we were so close.

Afterwards, salvation was called Dibu.

Yes, I know: it is not a name of savior of anything.

In Argentina, three years ago, nobody knew who Emiliano Martínez (a) Dibu was.

His relatives and friends knew that he had left very young to play for a second-class English team and there he had stayed.

He was not doing badly, nor was he doing well at all, until he flourished: two years ago, already at 27, he began to play regularly for Arsenal, they sold him to Aston Villa, it became expensive, they called him up for the national team.

And today, as you know, he saved two penalties, avoided disaster, became a national hero.

It must be weird being a national hero.

What will he think, when he goes to bed, a national hero?

Will he think about his nation, about his wife and children, about what that brunette who never paid attention to him will think now, about his mother, about the money she spent at school or only about him, about him? him, in him?

Will they think, the national heroes?

Because,

Besides, it's sad to have to be a national hero.

Galileo Galilei's assistant already said it in that work by Bertolt Brecht: "Poor lands that have no heroes."

And Galileo, brutal, answered him: "Poor lands that need heroes."

Argentina undoubtedly needs it, and it shows it non-stop.

And that we came so sweet, thanks to the cousins.

Perhaps you remember, Granjuán, that song by maestro Charly García that says that "joy is not only Brazilian": it was a desperate attempt to ask them not to take it all, to leave us a little.

Almost all the cousins ​​scoffed, some did not listen, some tried as if by accident, but the best are still ready to make any sacrifice to comply with the request: several of them were in the Qatari camp today and gave everything to give us one of those joys that only football knows how to give.

Brazil out in the quarterfinals.

For the Argentines, only their own triumph can be sweeter – and not even always.

Although, to hide it, now compadritos appear saying that in reality Brazil lost so as not to have to play against us.

But no, it was an almost logical defeat.

A few days ago we denounced another intolerable maneuver by FIFA here: when it replaced the Brazil-Korea match with a Brazilian training session against an Asian-looking sparring partner.

It was too crude;

today it was seen that, against a serious team, the Brazilians were not that but this.

A team with good players, without much plan, a lot of juggling, who shared the ball and attacks with Croatia, all very even;

the big difference was that the Croatian attacks died 25 meters from the goal of Brazil;

the Brazilians, 10 from Croatia.

But the Europeans also have a huge goalkeeper whose name is, it seems, Dominik Livakovic and he still plays for Dynamo Zagreb and is one of the few who knows that being able to save with your hands doesn't mean you can't save with your legs.

He stopped more with them than with any other member and held zero for almost two hours.

And yes, this Neymar scored, when almost nothing was missing, a beautiful goal that seemed definitive, but then a Mr. Bruno Petkovic appeared, so unknown.

He had the number 16 and had done absolutely everything wrong since his entrance a while before: he was clumsy, exceeded, he lost every ball he touched.

And yet he hooked the last one in extremis and sent it away and went, for a moment, to be so much more –another national hero– than the repaint of Neymar.

The one that, through Bolsonaro, managed to fail again:

years ago he left Barcelona to be the best in the world;

since then, he never stopped losing every game that mattered.

The losses, likewise, must be widely distributed.

I would like to know how much money how many people in the world lost: millions, so many millions who had bet on that logic that says that some dancing boys painted yellow in T-shirts and hair must be better than everyone else.

I hope you didn't.

Brazil was the absolute favourite, but there are other logics, and they are worth discussing.

What is gained and what is lost when a team with pure effort, tenacity, work, defeats one that gets entangled in its talent?

It remains to be seen.

Croatia is now the Argentine destination.

It is impressive to see a team so managed by a single player: Luka Modric is Croatia as Croatia is Luka Modric and a couple of vice versa.

Perhaps against some like this you have to get into their game and beat them with more intensity, more effort, more balls.

It would be lowering themselves, something that the Brazilians did not want or knew how to do – but it would surely work.

Croatia can be complicated, but it will be so much less so than Brazil.

And, of course, all the less dramatic.

A Brazil-Argentina semi was great.

Winning it over Brazil, eventually, is worth 10 times more than winning it over Croatia – eventually – but the chances are pretty slim.

Will have to see it on Tuesday.

In the meantime, let's talk about the important stuff.

In your last letter you refer to spitting, gargling, spitting or spitting, and I think it is a major issue that we should discuss in more depth as soon as the famous news gives us a break – and we can launch them.

I summon you, then, to the debate.

For now, for once, let's keep celebrating: soccer day could have been better, but not more intense, more heroic.

Hug.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2022-12-09

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