2023-12-16 06:27:38
While many of us, terrified and anguished, are glued in front of the television watching Milei and Macri’s Rodrigazo ads, football continues. Don’t let the party stop! There is a very, very unexpected final between Central and Platense for the League Cup, and another also unpredictable one that Estudiantes beat Defensa y Justicia for the Argentine Cup. Is it a democratization of football or a downward pairing? Don’t know. I know that I like the fact that teams like these arrive, beyond the fact that there were no great games (River’s first half once morest Central was good, then they ran out of gas) and most of them were decided by penalties.
Going back to the beginning, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to read an article regarding the moments in which football coexisted with great economic-political hecatombs in Argentina. Of course, I am not in a position to write it here and now. But it would not be a text to point out football as if it were responsible for something negative, but rather as the memory of those scenes in which social and economic disasters coexisted, with great football triumphs, something that is going to happen now with Central or Platense. Their fans will remember for a long time that they became champions at the time when Argentina was sinking.
Of course, the ’78 World Cup occupies a unique place, also followed by the ’82 World Cup (which almost did not coexist with the Falklands War, as remained in popular memory: the World Cup began on June 13 and the military surrendered on the day following. But beyond that discrepancy in dates, it did coexist with the ominous climate of the war). But let’s leave aside the World Cups during the dictatorship, because there is no comparison with them. But I do remember perfectly the championship won by Racing on December 27, 2001, just a few days following the tragic December 19 and 20, and in the midst of unprecedented political and economic chaos. It was Mostaza Merlo’s step-by-step team, suffering a draw once morest Vélez in the last game. That Racing team didn’t play well, but it was all emotion, drive, heart. He was a fair winner. Racing became champion following 35 years, in the midst of an unprecedentedly bad social and economic climate, and marked by an emotion, that of its fans, like I rarely saw. The suffering team triumphed in the midst of chaos.
Now things are different. Because 2001 indicated the end of a government cycle and, above all, of an economic plan – convertibility – that had begun ten years earlier. Now there is a newly assumed government and, I suppose, I would like to believe, arouses positive expectations among those who voted for them. But, in my opinion, economic disaster and social impoverishment await us around the corner. I don’t want to imagine the joy of Platense (a club my grandfather Abraham was a fan of) if he becomes champion for the first time. Or that of Central, which has not celebrated a title since 86-87. When a team wins, it is common to see the image of the rival, the loser, crying. Today there will be a new champion in Argentina. And the ones who are going to be crying are us, the workers, the popular sectors and the middle class.
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#tournament #crisis #déjà #insists
