happy man with tears

Tears were finally in place of joy, the place where Argentina waited since before the anthem. A team accustomed to good and bad luck, they seemed to have been touched by the first of the coins, but suddenly it all went downhill, uphill, so when the dreadful sudoku that was the game was put in its place by penalties, the stands breathed, the footballers embraced each other like children who had just come out of the torture of a stupid exam and the captain, finally, was a happy man with tears in his eyes.

There were two moments, in which France insisted, thanks to the footballing artifact that is Mbappé, to flood the hearts of Messi and his family with disappointment, and another in which tears had already been put in place that the Argentines they wanted, and the Albiceleste team became world champions.

In Qatar, far from home, but at home, those tears, those of Di María when it seemed that Mbappé was getting away with it, those of Messi when he got away with it in the name of his country’s legendary football. It happened, an astonished balloon, made to make joy more difficult, put Argentina under the obligation to laugh and cry at the same time.

That football, made of thorns and roses, completely shattered French ambitions in the first half which was like a garden of exquisite flowers, with Messi at the top of the standings and with his greatest opponent dissolved in brine. On two occasions Rosario’s intervention has generated such amazement in the French area that it seemed that the second part would have been like a subdued anthem, and this is how Argentina must have taken it, including Messi, because until the seventy minute it went almost everything without a hitch. Until it broke, and twice.

Football then showed unusual teeth, that of Mbappé, who threw the team on his shoulders and caused Di María (he was seen on TV), already absent on the bench, to cry children when they get lost in a high school. Then it happened to the captain. Messi looked, in the densest part of extra time, when Argentina was suffering from a deluge of lead, a devastated man, a soldier whom the army watches in amazement.

The surrender of France had given way to the virtual victory of France, e now came the gnashing of teeth of the Argentines, withdrawn until they caught their breath and joy. In the previous matches, the one that saw Croatia as contenders, Messi was the protagonist of several decisive feats, and this time he insisted, in the French area, on organizing a party that would bring back the joy of the fans. His goal made him weep like a blessed man.

He was a happy man with tears, that boy who dreamed of this trophy and fought for it so many times without hope, in a country that denied him salt when he didn’t win, was now the one who once again put the l ‘Argentina behind his back their decisions. He couldn’t avoid the 3-3, because the afternoon was denied calm, but football’s tribute to penalties was finally a happy session, unlucky for Mbappé’s men. The enthusiasm linked to football won, in which the oldest expert, the most qualified, the boy who was chasing this moment as if he wanted to deliver the trophy to his grandmother who watches it from wherever she wants, reaffirmed the deepest joy, that that hides inside the soul and is, simply, the happiness that is told only when the noise stops and someone shows you the photos of what happened one day when playing and winning wasn’t the subject of the script.

The subject of the script was to win with tears, and when the game was over we too watched it from the distance of a house in Tenerife We feel like Argentines celebrating that Messi, at 34, is world champion, a trophy he was destined for since before he was born.