The greatest virtue of football is its ability to stretch time. Football gives those memory tricks that allow you to continue enjoying a game from 30 years ago as if it had happened yesterday. Celta’s victory against Juventus, that historic 4-0 in UEFA, occurred yesterday. Makelele’s goal in the first 30 seconds of the game came yesterday. Mostovoi was having fun yesterday in Balaídos. Celta was the best team in Europe yesterday.
This is a message for Christopher Nolan: football nullifies the most basic principles of physics. But while it allows you to go back to a game from 30 years ago whenever you want, what I personally enjoy most is stretching out time the day after a victory. That is to say, what I enjoy most is the complete and active gloating that we fans engage in if our team has achieved an important victory.
The day after that game, Operation Tracking begins. It works best if you have an ally, or several, to mutually supply audiovisual material. Anything goes: new shots of plays, new replays of goals, statements that you had not heard, images inside the locker room that you had not seen, opinion columns that you had not read, recordings from the stands, messages on social networks, comments on stories, broadcasts of the match on international channels, broadcasts of the match on the rival team’s usual channels (here the joy is already absolute). Fortunately, there are also true professionals in this noble art of gloating. People with PhDs in the dopamine of football hangovers. They are the ones who, for example, edit videos following a single player (normally the one who stood out the most) during the match in question and upload it (for free!) to social networks almost without being aware that they have just become broadcasters. universals of pleasure.
What do you think is better: victory or being able to revel in it? Of course the second. You will probably think that this is a reprehensible and frivolous use of time, that there are much better things to spend it on. Yes, of course, but tell me: What could be more important than a few hours of pure and affordable enjoyment? Those minutes of delight you experience what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called flow or optimal experience. That is, when one feels so completely absorbed in an activity that provides pleasure and enjoyment that he is able to abstract himself from everything that is happening around him. Life is still out there with its traumas, problems and regrets, but what does it matter if for a few minutes you can be watching Rüdiger’s last penalty shot against Manchester City for the fourteenth time.
In recent years, football has lost the ability to surprise us. It’s downright difficult to see something in a stadium that leaves you speechless and suspended in time. But those days of flow continue to exist, increasingly rare, therefore, increasingly valuable. Despite all the monotony, the noise, the rigidity, the gambling, the greed, the business, the arbitration interests, the corruption, the racism, the machismo, the violence, the inequalities, the hierarchies; Despite everything that turns football into a renounceable and even despicable activity, the most intangible basic unit always prevails: emotion. The genuine emotion of getting up in the morning and knowing that yes, today finally yes, you will be able to review that important victory of your team from all the angles that the Internet God offers you.
You can follow The USA Print in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
_
