The back room of a decision: the champions of the national team have chosen not to repeat the photo on the balcony of Casa Rosada as in 1986

Neither crack nor fear of the “politicization” of sporting success. Tiredness. The world champion team has decided to limit the celebrations to the pilgrimage by bus, initially planned to reach the Obelisk but modified by the decision of the security agencies to which they had to comply, according to the president of the AFA, Claudius “Chiqui” Tapia. The players have taken as their last “effort” to reach the epicenter of the celebrations and travel the route with the people who, they knew, would be many. They had already experienced it at dawn, when it took them an hour to travel the six kilometers that separate the airport from the property.

The jerks for the Selection in Casa Rosada, they have not moved the campus needle. The players did not evaluate whether their presence was capitalized on by the government party or, conversely, their absence from the opposition. The group’s decision had to do solely with his fatigue.

After 35 days of living together, the players have found it convenient to “offer” themselves to people from the bus and avoid adding hours between the intimate greeting from President Alberto Fernández and the subsequent exit onto the balcony. Because, in addition, between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, each player would have the local version of the reception in their hometowns.

Already in flight, at an altitude of 10,000 metres, the president of the AFA, Claudio Tapia, he had probed the mood of the players: The informal invitations to the champions to bring the World Cup to Casa Rosada and to send the symbolic greeting to the people from the balcony on their mobile phone. The photo of Diego Maradona in 1986 and that of Messi, 36 years later, had excited everyone and had not received a negative response.

During the Rome stopover of the two planes carrying the delegation, the official Twitter account of the Argentina national team gave the only confirmation of its itinerary: 20 minutes before leaving for Buenos Aires, they confirmed that the team would be present the next day to the Obelisk, with a caravan that would leave from Ezeiza.

After landing at the airport in the early hours of Tuesday, Tapia’s three cell phones were crammed with messages: from the government they wanted to know if the informal invitations made had been met with positive response, because the formal invitation would not have arrived without knowing first. The various government interlocutors with the leaders of the AFA were looking for the same thing.

But the answer could not be given by Tapia. The head of the AFA understands that apart from commercial or advertising obligations, if players are called up, they must define their presence. If the decision had been made by Chiqui, the photo from the balcony would have been guaranteed: the symbolism of the Casa Rosada and the busy Plaza de Mayo are inescapable arguments.

“The square has a very important symbolism for us. The square is the town. From that balcony you talk to the people… but Chiqui agreed with the players: they want to go back to their family, they won the final on Sunday and they still haven’t they stopped for a second”contextualized a leader who has accompanied Tapia since it was unthinkable that he could sit in the Grondona armchair.

Meet at Complex Two

At dawn, Tapia then told Messi that he had to give the government an answer. “You decide, the balcony is at your disposal”he told him and the captain asked him for a few minutes to chat with the rest of the team in Complex Two owned by Julio Grondona.

It wasn’t the coffee table they invent Messi, Rodrigo De Paul, Nicolás Otamendi, Alejandro Gómez, Leandro Paredes and Ángel Di María: The captain gathered the 26 and stated that the invitation they had heard from Qatar was a fact and needed a response. There were some voices in favor and some against, but a single argument that ended up shaping a unanimous response: Nobody wanted to prolong the concentration that the group has been maintaining since Monday 14 November by one more minute.

Although Tapia communicated the group’s decision, the refusal did not prevent the invitations from being renewed. Mainly after the change of itinerary, when the National, Provincial and Municipal Security authorities advised against continuing towards the Obelisk due to the impossibility of advancing because the various roads were blocked by people. It was even rumored until the last moment, when the World Champions were about to embark on the helicopters of the ‘Ramón Falcón’ Police Academy, in the Villa Lugano neighborhood in Buenos Aires.

The incalculable number of people who spread between Ezeiza and the center of Buenos Aires made the reception historic. Even if they had wanted to, they would not have been able to reach the balcony of Casa Rosada. It is that they had already reached people before.