The power of a ball without an owner in Aldaia

We wanted to see something beautiful so much that the video quickly went viral: a group of children with mud stains up to their waists play soccer in the mud in Aldaia (Valencia), one of the towns most affected by dana. Surrounded by what looked like a washing machine, what had been a sofa, what had once served as a mattress and in front of a neighbor who is cleaning his destroyed garage, they enjoy an improvised party. The recording lasts just a few seconds, but it gives you time to even see the regret for a scoring chance, a very meaningful feeling. They are delivered. The ball, that is, the opportunity—to forget for a while about everything they had seen, to be distracted and distracted—was found in the street. Nobody really has a ball, just as nobody has, for a long time, an umbrella. They are not lost either, they simply change hands. They are there, waiting for someone to need them and pick them up: from the mud, from an umbrella stand, forgotten in a bar. They may seem like little, insignificant objects, but both are temporary shields and, in their optimized version, they serve more than one purpose.

The ball appeared and friends emerged — that is always the order. “I came by there, I saw them and I asked them if I could play,” one of those children, Roberto, told the sixth. “You have become famous!” reporter Germán Muñoz tells them. “We were playing soccer,” explains Iker, eight years old—who was the one who found the ball—“and I don’t know what happened that a helicopter above or something started recording us because it’s very strange.” The equipmentIt was left unusable: “I went home in my underwear,” confesses Álvaro. Roberto was in pajamas.

“They were helping like anyone else, pulling brooms, removing mud…”, explains the father of one of them, Alejandro, “but they found a ball and what had to happen came up.” The video reached the eyes of Valencia, who, with good reflexes, invited the children to the Paterna sports city to play with their idols. Iker clarifies that he can play as a “forward, goalkeeper or defenseman.” Everything except midfielder. Soccer player Hugo Duro changes position to play goalkeeper for a while in a penalty shootout. They also play “so that it doesn’t fall.” It’s sunny.

Similar videos circulate on social networks: firefighters from another city who take a break in Alfafar, without removing their helmets, to play soccer with children, using two trees that were left standing as a goal, or who play with a child in another destroyed street in Paiporta. Horror professionals also need a break. The cars went down the roads like fish through a river and the emergency teams had to enter some flooded parking lots by zodiac, but after the shipwreck, little by little, islands are emerging, spaces to roll a ball, to return to begin.

The coaches of the clubs in the towns affected by the damage show in the X account of the Football Federation of the Valencian Community the destruction of their stadiums, the grass raised, wrinkled like a fan by the force of the water; old trophies poking out of the mud… Juanjo Rodríguez, Claret’s sports director, explains that they had just begun renovations. Along with all the videos, the same message: “Football is the most important of the least important things and together we all have to recover the enthusiasm to play again.” The determination of those children from Aldaia to make the ball roll in the mud shows that it is possible; They are the first stone of reconstruction. If faith moves mountains, passion moves oceans. Ingrid Bergman already said it in Casablanca: “The world collapses and we fall in love.”

While, from the stands, spectators of the catastrophe decided to believe and massively share the hopeful video of the Aldaia soccer children, some managersThey took the opportunity to attack the rival team, trying to boycott a Spanish victory in the Euro Cup. It did not come out and Teresa Ribera will be, barring any surprise, vice president of the European Commission, but with the tragedy still very present, there are those who prefer to continue subscribing to the ritual of being mistaken for an enemy. Let them get a ball.