drinks and fish

It happened during Spain's debut in the last World Cup, with a marker so bulky that reason advised to flutter in a circle and avoid trials by combat: a divided ball, a Costa Rican colossus that takes Laporte ahead, and Gavi, apparently contemplating from a distance, he throws himself like a man possessed to settle scores with that god of ebony and steely muscles.

Pedri, who has that face of not knowing anything, but is in on everything, stops him a few meters from the conflict while yelling at him: "Where are you going?"

Then Gavi laughs, taking another look at the contender and improvising a gesture of relief, as if he had not coldly calculated the measure of his possibilities.

In the absence of really solid football arguments, Barça's first post-Messi title can be explained by the unconsciousness of a boy old enough to return home before twelve and a central defender, Uruguayan to be more precise, who has been made ugly by criticism. a certain genetic deficiency, lacking that DNA that exalted so many laboratory models with no real chance of succeeding in high competition.

The Catalan club is accused, with some regularity and from rival trenches, of promoting a story that does not fully conform to reality, as if this were for the benefit of Barça itself and not of those, for example, who would rub their hands thinking that Araujo could one day end up on the market —who knows, you never know— for not adjusting to the metaphysical and ideological profile of the position game.

The Cup, which for Barça passes through Ceuta in its second contact this season, could serve to confirm or dismantle a change in trend that is based on their own feelings as well as those of their greatest rival.

The Madrid of January is used to being an enigma, but this year's seems more like a riddle, you know: "It looks like gold, it's not silver."

A setback in Vila-real would place Ancelotti under an uncomfortable spotlight that he already knows first-hand.

After all, the praise of summer usually lasts, in Concha Espina, what it takes for a newspaper cover to renew itself as a wrapper for fish, which is the central object of the mafia threat par excellence.

Ending the cup day like Luca Brasi in the first installment of The Godfather does not seem like a realistic scenario for the Italian coach, but stranger things have been seen in Madrid, which is already looking askance at the ghosts of past winters with some sheets of paper. calculation in hand.

Suspicions about Carletto's second seasons are on the lips of many fans and the defeat against Barça could have set in motion a process that nobody knows, for sure, when it starts and where it ends: it is the mystery of the famous communicating vessels.

Curiously, in the middle of all the emotional ups and downs is Sergio Busquets, who hasn't moved an inch from his privileged position in 15 years.

His figure represents the only silent constant in the successes of Barça and the Spanish team, despite the fact that he usually leads all the lists when it comes to personalizing defeats.

"Busquets has done a lot of damage to football: it seems easy to do what he does," declared a Martín Zubimendi whom specialized critics point out as one of his most promising heirs.

One day we will wonder why football - and especially what is not football - insists on doing the same damage to him, with how expensive fish is.

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