The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset said that “to be surprised, to be surprised, is to begin to understand.” This is how passions begin. Something—it can and usually is a tiny detail—captures our attention and becomes the beginning of a path that will have ups and downs, that will stop at inns and hotels and that, above all, will allow us to broaden our vision through of knowledge of other realities. Something like this happened to journalist and international soccer expert Axel Torres when he was a child. Added to his early incorporation into the profession was the attraction that the Balkans exerted on the European generation that was growing up in the 90s. The stories and images of the war that devastated the former Yugoslavia were reproduced in the world press, impacting thousands of children. and adolescents who did not know what an armed conflict was. Added to this drama was the fascination with the sporting talent that the area exported. Major team sports competitions incorporated those players fleeing the war. Their skill and competitive spirit meant that, in many cases, they became idols. The echoes of the fearsome Red Star, Partizan of Belgrade or Jugoplastika still resounded.
As a result of that childhood passion, in 2013 Torres began a series of five trips to the field, the story of which has become the book Balkan Chronicles (Against). The initial objective was to get closer to the reality of football in Albania and Kosovo. The final result is a text that goes far beyond football: it has history and it has stories; It has everyday characters and moments; It has the aroma of the author’s contained illusion as he discovers and gets to know it. He chooses those destinations because he hardly knows anything about them, because they are not simple and because he senses that there, people still play for the mere pleasure of playing. The book, which incorporates photographs by Edu Ferrer and Tomás Martínez, makes a final stop in Serbia and Bosnia. The entire journey returns the reader to Ortega y Gasset: “everything in the world is strange and wonderful to wide-open eyes.”
