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A winner and his extras: World Cup winner Messi at the closing ceremony in Qatar
Photo: CARL RECINE / REUTERS
In the end they all cried, the Argentine coach, the goalkeeper, the goal scorer to make it 1-0, the shooter of the winning penalty, the whole team.
Only Messi didn't cry.
I looked closely.
Messi laughed and looked so light as if he had been relieved of a huge burden like all of us.
Luckily it's over, this insane World Cup in the desert, Gianni Infantino's billion-dollar show, this embarrassing PR stunt by the Emir of Qatar, who, at the moment of his greatest happiness, put a Qatari robe on Messi to say one last "fuck you" in the World to send: We bought all this vermilion here, we determine how it ends.
I looked at the players celebrating and then went outside to the Christmas market around the corner.
No one talked about France versus Argentina there.
A mug of mulled wine was steaming in front of me, and I was thinking of Messi's incredible goal in extra time.
It was like slowly coming off a six week LSD trip.
This tournament took strength from everyone who looked at it with halfway open eyes.
The human rights violations in previous years, the exploitation of workers, the corruption in the ranks of Fifa, football in the gravel desert - this World Cup was wrong.
Still, I enjoyed watching a lot of games, Morocco vs Portugal in the quarter-finals or Netherlands-Argentina;
it has no heart who did not flinch as the mother of Moroccan goalkeeper Yassine Bounou danced on the pitch with delight at her son's performance.
It's not possible to enjoy something and distance yourself from it at the same time.
Thank goodness this schizophrenia is over.
I wish that with this World Cup the very German moral rigorism that knows everything better, does not tolerate other attitudes and wallows in a boycott will also end,
who is at least a decade too late.
Hey, it's almost Christmas, you can make a wish.
When I got home, the crime scene was playing as if nothing had happened.
And it was exceptionally wonderful.
