The hundred seconds before

Every honest compatriot and even thieves can recite by heart what happened ten years ago: the directed chest dip, twenty-five meters from the goal, the glance at the Uruguayan goalkeeper as if exploiting the force of gravity and the well-balanced left-footed shot from the hip that nailed it like a picabar.

What is not part of the patriotic recital of that time are the hundred seconds before: the ball coming out on the ground; the coming and going of the warm leather; the clinging, biting retreat of the thousand Uruguayan defenders.

That header from Abel Aguilar may seem like a lucky rebound only if we do not consider those previous seconds during which the three lines of the national team worked to corner the quintessential Latin American defense.

That tactical order, that sacrifice and that ability to press with coordinated lines that José Néstor Pékerman gave us a decade ago, is today woven by one of his disciples, the former defender of the Argentine national team that was runner-up in the World Cup in 1990, Néstor Gabriel Lorenzo, and in that duplication of Nestor how not to read the wake of a dynasty.

Yesterday, Friday, July 12, 2024, forty-eight hours before the final of the 2024 Copa América, James David Rodríguez Rubio, the visible link to the Néstor dynasty, turned the age of Christ. In his eighteen years as a professional soccer player (2006-2024), James has already signed two of the three most important milestones in Colombian soccer: the victory against Uruguay in the round of 16 of the 2014 World Cup with his Puskás goal, and the victory against Uruguay in the semifinal of the 2024 Copa América with an assist that was his sixth in the tournament, something no one had ever achieved since the record – five assists – was held by Lionel Messi, the number 10 of the current world champion team. Holy crap.

Needless to say, this Sunday, July 14, 2024, when Néstor Segundo’s team plays the final against the world champion team, James Rodríguez faces the most important new milestone in Colombian football, and if he manages to accompany this generation of footballers to victory against Argentina, it will be a long time before our seas, mountains and jungles once again give birth to a number 10 who can break it all, just as the fundamental number 10 of the Néstor dynasty broke it all in this tournament.

But a football team with a vocation for history is never just about its singular star.

It often happens that we look at the records and the recognitions and the sports narratives focused on those who score goals and provide assists with such a fantasy-like eagerness that we barely notice the previous laboriousness that makes the fantasy possible: the hundred seconds before the invention; the manual labor.

In Wednesday’s semi-final against Uruguay, the team came out to play and the space it was leaving gave rise to two counterattacks that came close to opening the scoring in Uruguay’s favour. Lorenzo adjusted his lines and after the thirtieth minute of the first half, everything went for Colombia, which added three corner kicks, the third of which it capitalised on with a workmanlike strength that this team works on and that is not – was not – common in the DNA of Colombian football: aerial play. Everything seemed clear for Colombia, but then Daniel Muñoz was sent off.

Teams with a crafty and combative DNA like Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina itself cannot be beaten with goals alone. They are beaten on the pitch, and responding in an obvious way and with a blow to the classic provocation of the pinch is exactly the opposite of knowing how to play on the pitch.

Then came what every honest compatriot and even the thieves did not expect in the midst of the torment that was the rest of the match: impeccable management of the changes and timing by the conductor of the orchestra. What Lorenzo did, between the first change forced by the expulsion (the second right back, Santiago Arias, came on), and the fifth change in the last ten minutes of the match (Luis Sinisterra came on for Lucho Díaz, gave air to the attack and it was Sinisterra who stole the two balls that almost ended in Colombia’s second goal), was the master and patient touch of the only person in the stadium wearing the Colombia jersey who was not about to lose his mind and drop dead from a heart attack. Perhaps the secret of Néstor Gabriel Lorenzo’s purple shirt is that it squeezes his heart in such a way that it gives him sanity and prevents heart attacks.

Another great coach of the current Colombian football scene, Alberto Miguel Gamero from Santa Marta, a former right-back, has spent four years disarming the anxiety of one of the largest fan bases in the country by teaching one vital thing: finals are to be enjoyed; superhuman physical effort and monk-like concentration are required to get there and enjoy them.

Finals can be won or lost and these are the records of the kind of miserable sporting history we have built, where memory is for the winners and oblivion for the runners-up.

But before winning or losing, the ball will run for infinite seconds, and at some point in those tensions and clashes that must be joy, in the hundred seconds before the hard-fought and decisive corner kick, in those hundred seconds before the tragic mistake that leads to an expulsion, when those hundred seconds of hard work pass before the goal that triggers the apotheosis, let us stop and look at the workers who are pushing and marking and running and making those hundred seconds before glory possible.

Because glory is short, it fades away.

Instead, a culture of the court and hierarchy, which is only possible with workers who make the stars shine, and stars who know how to shine alongside the workers’ brilliance – Richard Ríos’ ball-striking, Jefferson Lerma’s pass out, Davinson Sánchez’s speed in closing – is a value that endures and its construction is slow: dynasties.

This Néstor dynasty is one that dances: the squad of twenty-six Colombian footballers present at the 2024 Copa América knows what joy is.

Let’s light a tricolor candle so that tomorrow, Sunday, at the end of the night, the whole world will see our dressing room, which has gone crazy with dancing.

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