Football delay in many ways. Here are two. Javier Marías left us a great phrase: “Football is the weekly recovery of childhood.” So in a game there are thousands of people at the stadium and millions in their homes, calling for their childhood. On the other hand, football is happy with our animal back room, so that it also summons the primitive man we went. Wild children are not easy to persuade, so great games have some watchmaking pump. You have to ensure that it does not explode inside the stadium.
The derby left us almost three hours of the game that will swallow forgotten. It contributes to this the empire of tactics put at the service of prudence, Atlético because it is his football personality, he took care of the spaces, and Madrid because he is going through a stage of insecurity, he took care of the ball. One effectively defended, the other attacked without conviction and the two made few things happen. It is true that, as Cholo said, Madrid “had a bad time.” It is also true that Madrid, once again, fallen again.
Football is a collective construction that providential players make jump through the air. If the construction fails, the team will not find the order. If the providential players fail, there will be no solution to the problems and the game will be locked in a bureaucracy always exciting, but boring. Exciting, because a party between Titans is the kingdom of uncertainty. Bored, because a play will look like the previous one again and again. Atlético found possibilities to run several times, but always ran into Courtois. Madrid found useful space only once Mbappé, in prodigious play, could only stop it on a penalty. The danger that Atlético took care of it so much to protect. Vinicius did not succeed and the game endured bureaucracy in every creative attempt.
Even so, the party interested the child and even satisfied the savagery of the feelings that, we said, underlies every fan in matches of this dimension. The conservative intentions of the two teams took us, I think that just, to that Russian roulette combat that is the penalty shootout. Football reduced to a shot, nothing simpler. But because of the always irritating interference of the VAR, an accidental touch of Julián Alvarez caused a catastrophe and the catastrophe unleashed the paranoia that the Atlético people soon transforms into moral disgust. Because what we understood as an error, quickly turned it into a trap. Needless to say, the mountain of data that we swallow since then, has confused us more than it has clarified.
The VAR was sold as a technological solution that would bring justice and that, for the moment, for every kilo of justice brought tons of bewilderment and distrust. This week a reasonable person told me that the VAR had arrived to prevent the “hands of God” (at this point the only thing I lack is that the VAR cancels that goal), but to justify such a technological introduction it is necessary to go back forty years, very necessary it should not be the essential var. In any case, if it amends conflicts of that size, not even me would seem bad to me. But determined to solve millimeter problems, the VAR does nothing more than to literate in regulatory modeces. On this occasion he intervened to convert an accident, imperceptible to the human eye, into decisive.
The truth is that a gigantic event should leave equally large traces in the memory of the fans, but the resolution of the match of the year will only leave a twisted technological footprint. It does not seem very proportional.
