2023-07-08 07:03:54
“What are you looking at, fool? Andá pa’ allá!”, Messi’s phrase said during the World Cup in Qatar is nominated in the “Viral Bomb” category of the MTV MIAW awards. As I read in Wikipedia, “the MTV MIAW Awards are an award ceremony made by the MTV Latin America television channel that currently reward the best of music, social networks and entertainment of the Centennial Generation.” And as I read on the same site, “Generation Z, also known by other names as post-millennial or centuric (from English centennial), is the demographic cohort that follows the Millennial Generation and precedes the Alpha Generation. Demographers and researchers typically point to the mid-to-late 1990s to the mid-2000s as the beginning of the generation’s birth years, while there is little consensus regarding their termination. A bit confusing. But it doesn’t matter: I hope I win! In the category he was shortlisted with Shakira, for his musical theme in the Bizarrap Session that he dedicated to his ex, Gerard Piqué, and Bad Bunny, for throwing a fan’s cell phone into a river who wanted to take a picture with him.
Win or lose, with that little phrase Messi entered the small table of great Argentine phrasers, which has an integrated podium, with a wide advantage over the rest, by Perón, Borges and Maradona. The great phrases of each one are so many, that he would not reach this column to account for them. Messi’s speech, up to that sentence, was characterized neither by wit, nor by irony, nor by fever, nor by anything else: it was the bland language of the one who seemed to say “I only speak with my feet”. But now he entered another category. Imagine if this year he wins the Ballon d’Or and MTV MIAW!
Did that award exist in Maradona’s time? He would have won it year following year. In fact, I’ve seen dozens of polls regarding Diego’s best goals and plays, but maybe one might be done to choose the best phrase from him. My favorites are neither the bullies (“I’ll wait for you in Segurola and Havana”), nor the victimizers (“I don’t want to dramatize, but I swear they cut my legs”), nor the ones lost beforehand, like the one told to Castrilli (“Teacher, are you dead?”), but those that stage an irony that quickly becomes popular knowledge, such as “the turtle escaped” (when the United States ambassador really lost the turtle he had), or “the hand of God” or, perhaps not so ironically, “the ball does not stain.” There Maradona touches a vein of the language that we might call commoner, instituting, intuitive. After all, what is intuition but intelligence in fast motion.
Will Messi return to utter some other historical phrase? Don’t know. For now, his story goes through going to play in Miami for a team whose owners… well, almost out of space, now is not the time to develop the trajectory (rather a handbook) of the family that owns Inter Miami. And also without space to vote for my favorite Borges and Perón phrases. There will be no lack of opportunity, surely.
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