I was happily walking along the Gran Vía, in the fresh air, enjoying the magic of the radio and almost empty streets when, without warning, one of the journalists said that “Real Madrid is, right now, seventeenth.” Seventeenth. I have to admit that I did not succumb to dizziness because one is no longer old enough for the physical reactions of a fifteen-year-old, but for a few seconds I remained perplexed, looking into nothingness and thinking about what would become of the Inditex empire – just at that moment I was circulating in front of the window of a Zara — the day that one of his gyrfalcons normalized this type of results.
Nor are we talking about anything definitive, far from it: we know the white team enough not to believe in early collapses and irreversible limps. That is why the level of drama to which a team built on so many guarantees of success seems capable of subjecting us to the point that any small failure becomes a tortuous path to bury the mother, let the analogy be understood well. These are days where everyone talks. And where too many things are said, including a Carlo Ancelotti who, as a general rule, prefers to err on the side of caution rather than be too right. Yesterday, however, he appeared in the press room and uttered a bold “I can’t say that my players are lazy, but at this moment we are not capable of doing effective collective work.” It is not a small tomato, since we all know the importance of the first proposition in any adversative.
Of the footballers, only Lucas Vázquez came out to give some explanation: captain, Galician, veteran… He didn’t say much, to the relief of his teammates and the greater annoyance of the fans who began to evacuate the stadium long before the end: let’s not even go Real , nor tail of bagpipes. On Barça’s night, with half the stadium in shock and some halters uttering racist insults, none of the white protagonists even bothered to stand in front of one of the press microphones, or the club itself, to reassure their fans. Or to report an accident, anything. We live in liquid times in which the footballer understands the job as an obligation and communication as entertainment, which is why they tend to dedicate more time to their social networks than to the classic format.
The same thing happens with their families, so loving and protective of their loved ones that they often fill the ball in public, with the corresponding danger for the emotional integrity of Real Madrid fans. “I have to close this because they are taking me prisoner,” Mina Bonino, Federico Valverde’s wife, exploded as soon as the match ended. “Where Fede plays best is as a pivot… When are they going to fucking understand that he’s not a winger?” Maybe he has plenty of outbursts, but he wouldn’t lack reason. Or I won’t be the one to argue with her, no matter how much the messages ended up disappearing and Bonino reported the temporary hacking of her account: “They have me rotten.”
It is too early to consider the buffalo hunted. Getting excited about the great rival’s setbacks is usually the straightest path to discouragement, since we all remember our mothers tucking us into bed and offering us hot milk after the umpteenth resurrection of Real Madrid. Borrowed happiness always has an advantage. It offers us an impression of eternity that never crystallizes and, in the end, like those cardboard that the wind scatters vaguely along the Gran Vía, we discover that, once again, we find ourselves at the mercy of the elements. And small elements: Mbappé, Vinicius Jr., Valverde, Bellingham, Rodrygo, Modric… Being silent, at least for the moment, like going to mass, does us no harm.
