The first European defeat, the injuries and the good progress of the leader Barcelona are frustrating one of the most fun debates that occur in Madrid when there is a transfer boom: the stars get along badly. It’s not the fact of how they get along that makes it fun, but the process. It demands a fussy look at the players in the training videos, in the matches and when they go out for lunch or dinner in Madrid that reveals, following devilish logic, an aversion. Any look (that little look from Mbappé to Endrick, so viral, like Sánchez’s looks at the Kings that for the ultra press demonstrate the existence of a coup d’état in progress), any fuss, a clear pass that is not given, a greeting that seems, from Pontevedra, quite cold… everything is susceptible to crisis in the locker room, one of the most suggestive euphemisms when there is a locker room.
That is why, when the games go through boring stretches, like this Saturday against Villarreal, it is entertaining to follow another game that I call the game of affection: who looks at whom, who embraces the first in goals and who the last, Who first defends the teammate from the referees or the rivals. Of course, who shares stories and distribute likes on Instagram, who comments and what they comment. It is a useless and fruitless dissection, but it serves to pass the time, an endless debate that Christian I The Wise already settled when he said that he was not one for dinners or kisses or friends: you will win at work, to do what is best for the team, to park your personal tunes for the collective one.
I was thinking about all of this when this weekend in Córdoba La SER organized a conference in which they talked about polarization, which is something that has always existed, what happens is that the media tends to treat what is current as if it were new. Who gets along well and who gets along poorly, what consequences that can have and why we should care. Of course, the matter was serious and this one not so much; look at Dani Carvajal, footballer of sporting and political polarization. Player whom anti-Madridism has in its sights and on whom extraordinary pressure has been created: a serious injury has served to know that this polarization around him had a lot of aesthetics. Love, peace and good wishes from rival players and fans.
Getting along well or badly is a rather overrated thing that usually serves only for very inflated, very striking, but purely superficial debates. Getting along well or badly helps you know who to hang out with outside of work, but at work, except for mentally damaged superiors who can destroy your life, it only serves to ruin that job if you are a bad professional. The “they can’t stand it” applied to elite players produces a certain blush, especially if it is true: imagine that it worries you or that it worries them.
Few things unite more than competition. One of the most shocking scenes in the documentary about Luis Enrique that Movistar has released is the one that describes the moment in which the player Luis Enrique ends his career. Neither his children will remember him on the field, he says, nor does he know very well what to do next, but compete. Do you know how “friends” you can become with someone who competes for the same things as you with the same shirt as you? Do you know how much you can love a guy that you can’t stand when he gives you an assist on a goal? Football is a sport so absurdly happy that it is not at odds with the enmity, if it exists, nor with the more frequent paranoia of its fans.
