Atlético de Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid play the most important games of the year this week. Against three giant rivals, in grandiose settings, and with millions of fans in front of the television. We who are anxious will devour today and tomorrow the previews, the analyses, the opinions, the discussions, the fine print of the smallest of the sports newspapers in our country and in the country of the club we are facing; Some of us will return to that childish thing of playing the game in every gesture of our daily lives (do we have to make a work call? If it picks up before the third whistle, we win). Among these analyzes a truth always appears wandering: the minimum details, everything that escapes the reason of the coaches and even the players; a silly yellow in the first minute, a rebound, a referee error on a throw-in, a leg that goes for the ball half a second later and scores a penalty. And all this is what we see (will see) live.
But in previews as long and detailed as those of these matches, so transparent for the fan, others take place in parallel about which we know nothing. I remember a lot, for example, what happened to Jacobo Fandiño on the day of his presentation at Atlético Mediterráneo. Fandiño is the protagonist of the novel by Sergio V. Jodar (coin toss, Panenka); On his first day as an Atlético Mediterráneo player he left home without shitting. A player of severe discipline in his mornings (banana, glass of hot water, unsweetened coffee and two pieces of toast, one of them obviously avocado), he always went to the bathroom 18 minutes after having breakfast with the certainty that anyone who leaves the house without evacuate is not a man one can trust. Not that day. Thus, on his walk through his new stadium he tries to go to the bathroom a couple of times (“to see them”), and when he finally manages to get into one, he sits on the toilet bowl and reads in a newspaper what the coach has said about him: “I ordered some custard and they brought me a flan.” The touches with the ball on the grass were no better: his presentation is third in the ranking of the most ridiculous on YouTube.
What do we know about the eleven types on which our happiness depends this Tuesday and this Wednesday? Nothing. We might think that his private circumstances could have an effect on his public life, that is, in the field. Many years ago there was a rumor that a player asked for a change at half-time and ran home because he was sure that his wife was cheating on him while taking advantage of his games (it was clearly a ridiculous hoax: wasn’t it more Safe to do it when he traveled with the team?). We could also think that perhaps there are those who this week in the countryside remember the hospitalization of a relative, a happy or ruinous investment, an upcoming wedding with the woman they are in love with, a stomach pain and the memory (icy sweats) that they didn’t go to the bathroom this morning. Well, we shouldn’t worry.
Hours before the World Cup final, Ronaldo Nazario suffered an attack that no one ever knew why; They took him to the hospital, they took him out of the lineup, they returned him to the field without knowing what had happened to him and if he would repeat himself, but this time on the grass and in front of hundreds of millions of people. “Did he ever think about that?” EL PAÍS asked him. “No. Definitely. I was looking for possibilities to score goals, to get rid of the defender, to move around the field looking for the opportunity to do damage. The head is exclusively within the party. A World Cup final! What else could he think about?
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