[Sports] The Carpe Diem of the Argentine fans: "We need football so that reality does not kill us"

[Kyro]

The Christ is Maradona or the Christ is Messi in this albiceleste procession on the way to stadiums that are not Calvary. Quite the opposite. They are places to meet without confrontation and where to feel in the most intense way possible, to experience ecstasy, because tomorrow everything can go to hell. "We are here because we are Argentines, but you don't understand it!" blurts out a fan wrapped in her flag, with an injected look. The answer is as simple as it is incomprehensible: it is the emotional transformation of a fan that cannot be compared to any other in a World Cup setting, be it in the Doha metro, in Moscow's Red Square or on Copacabana beach, where crowds camped. without a ticket for days before the 2014 final, lost to Germany. The majestic Lusail Stadium, dyed in albiceleste, will once again help Messi's team to "play at home", tonight against the Netherlands, in a way that we cannot understand. The lady was right. Better ask for help.

In Argentina it is impossible to be far from soccer, a backbone and idiosyncratic element, but to seek explanations for this sociological phenomenon it is more appropriate to knock on the door of culture. "Football offers Argentines a meeting point that we don't have in any other field, it allows us to overcome a factious spirit that we manifest in everything else. And, added to that, it offers us a reason for pride," says writer Eduardo Sacheri, author of The Question of Their Eyes, a novel on which the film El secreto de sus ojos, by Juan José Campanella, winner of an Oscar in 2010. «We feel that we are called to a future of greatness that 100 years ago we insisted on denying. That discrepancy between what we believe we should be and what we are, is resolved by football," he adds.

The albiceleste, the glorious, represents us all, contrary to what happens in Spain", continues Jorge Eines, a teacher and theater director who alternates his activity between our country and Argentina, and whose school Imanol Arias or Juan Echanove passed through. , among other prestigious actors. In the absence of those other reasons for pride that Sacheri refers to, Eines adds: "With a country with 100% inflation, you have to live from immediate satisfaction because the future is uncertain." «The response so expressive, so intense -he explains-, has to do with the fact that at any moment everything can go to shit. We are a people accustomed to living with a grenade in our hand from which the pin has been removed and, in order for it not to explode, you have to insert your finger into it. Let's go with that grenade from one side to another, also to football ».

"WE ARE THE SAME IN EVERYTHING"
Both Sacheri and Eines agree: "We are like that in everything, not only in football." «We are histrionic, hyperbolic, passionate, emotional and naturally exhibit what we think and feel about anything. Perhaps it is because of that mixture of Spanish and Italians that we are made of", continues Sacheri, for whom the intensity of the fans on soccer fields, the "permanent song", is already a characteristic in the club competition of the country. «The national team adds the identity element, because nation and football are extraordinarily mixed in Argentina. That's why they sing 'he who doesn't jump is English', in reference to the Malvinas war,” he continues.

"We need football so that the truth does not kill us," asserted Eines, in a country where the tragic fate is common to the idols and martyrs of its national pantheon: Garlos Gardel, Evita Perón and Diego Maradona. The representatives of tango, Peronism and soccer, three elements that cross Argentina in the flesh, but also of this Carpe Diem that reaches the stands.

https://www.elmundo.es/deportes/futbol/mundial-de-futbol/2022/12/09/6390bbd521efa0f9658b458b.html