If there are games that change your life, mine was undoubtedly an Atlético de Madrid-Real Madrid game in April 2015. That duel at the old Vicente Calderón marked the beginning of a football schism in the family that separated my children in two. sides: the mattress and the madridista. Well matched, yes. But irreconcilable.
It all started because my daughter, Diana, then six or seven years old, was one of the girls chosen to go hand in hand with the players in that Champions League match. As at home we were always Real Madrid, she went with the illusion of holding hands with Cristiano Ronaldo, the white star. However, she had to accompany Koke, the rojiblanco captain.
I imagine that you are thinking that after being so close to one of Atlético’s emblems, having that impressive view from the grass of the roaring fans, he would go over to his eternal rival. But it was not like that. That episode did not deviate one millimeter from her convictions. Actually, as we waited for Diana to go up to the stands after the anthem to watch the game, the one who was undergoing a kind of conversion was my other son, Mario.
In the prolegomena I already realized that something was happening to him. The flares, the songs, the push of the people. He looked at everything as ojiplático. And when we sat down in our locations and he saw that stadium that almost trembled with so much fervor, that he did not faint at any time during the 90 minutes, he was amazed. The game ended 0-0 and when he left he told me the fateful phrase: “Dad, from today I’m from Atleti.”
It has been a long time since that, he is now 14 years old, and he is still in his thirteen. Sometimes, jokingly, I tell him that he still has time to reconsider and I take him to the Madrid supporters club in Rivas, the Madrid town where we live. Others, he even lent me to accompany him to the Cívitas Metropolitano so that he could see the admirers of him Griezmann and Oblak.
Whatever he does, I think that at this point I am not going to change him. And it doesn’t seem so bad to me, really.
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