You don't cry for football

On any given day last week, around eleven in the morning, a girl sitting opposite me in a Madrid subway car began to cry.

She first tried to hide her tears by bowing her head, as if shrinking into herself, until containment was completely impossible.

Her jaw trembled.

She was having a hard time breathing.

At one point she looked up from her, tear-soaked, and she apologized.

I replied that she didn't have to ask for forgiveness, she would have to cry as much as she needed.

And I kept thinking about why crying in public still seems to us something deserving of an apology, when we would never apologize for laughing in front of other people.

When you cry in public you feel the pressing need to recover.

Stop now, please.

Behave.

You are drawing people's attention.

It is preferable to keep the lump in the throat for hours, bottle the crying and consume it at home, alone and discreetly.

It seems that the functional adult is the one who can repress the most emotions simultaneously.

Perhaps one of the few places where tears become a global issue and escape the intimacy that is assumed for them are stadiums, or any space where several people gather to watch the same important game.

In a game, tears are communal, a natural part of the cult.

However, tears for football are not understood far from the ecosystem in which they are produced.

It is quite common to hear that "Football is not worth crying for", "Crying for eleven guys hitting a ball, how absurd, with the important things in life", "Are you really crying for something that doesn't feed you."

Enrique Ballester collects it in his book that bears the same name,

(Books of the Ko).

"What's happening?

That we can only be sad for what gives us money?

Seriously?" he wonders.

"All the times I cried for soccer" could be the title of another novel.

Just last week it was four years since I last cried for my team, Celta de Vigo.

It was March 30, 2019. A Celta-Villarreal.

Result, 3-2.

Iago Aspas returned to that match after several months of injury and returned to a sheared Celta, in relegation places.

Villarreal was then a direct rival in the always painful task of survival.

We started losing 0-2, but Aspas cleared up the drama starting the comeback and finishing it.

The cameras focused on him leaving the field with his eyes injected into a scarlet cloak.

I think half of Balaídos cried that day.

And possibly from the set of tears permanence was born, as a kind of religious immersion ritual.

Many of us belong to the group of fans whose mood is governed by the victory and defeat of their team, in the same way that the tides are dictated by the moon.

In this sense, a priori, two types of crying are produced in one stage: happiness and sadness.

I would suggest that the latter represents the original purpose of crying, although the former is rather more satisfying.

I say a priori because, in reality, the tears for an important game usually go much further than a result.

Maybe two rows ahead that boy will cry for the victory, but also for remembering his father.

Perhaps, four seats back, she will cry because she would like to be hugging her ex-partner at that moment, where she will be watching the game and especially with whom.

Or maybe, to the right,

In a stadium you cry for the same thing and also for what is different.

Football, after all, is not a substitute for life, it is part of it.

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