With age, dreams tend to be toned down. You start by believing you are Neeskens and end up writing his obituary the day he dies. The practice of journalism is not bad at all, there are worse things and I’m not going to complain, but it’s not the same to play in a World Cup as to explain it, no matter how much we get into the role by increasingly abusing emotions to bridge the gap. It’s obvious that, when the time comes, we will tell our grandchildren (no rush, my children) stories of what we lived through, but nothing will compare to those shared by the footballers, now older and retired, because their anecdotes will belong to another division. It’s not the same to be Napoleon as a private soldier.
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These days my healthy envy is all for Lionel Scaloni. Since the fantasy of being a footballer expired long ago, the focus shifts in other directions. I followed Argentina’s champion team in Qatar in all their matches in person and there I already noticed their coach, a sane man in the middle of a crazy country… In the current World Cup he remains determined to soften the tremendous noise that always surrounds the albiceleste and to relativize his merits as a coach. Both aspirations seem as difficult as they are commendable to me.
The coach of the Argentina national team masters the art of downplaying himself, and does so naturally
I don’t know if he admires Epictetus, who was not a right back but a Greek philosopher and pillar of stoicism, but his press conferences suggest so. His modesty, hateful when false, instead conveys authenticity, and his reflections, although wise, lack the excess rhetoric for which his compatriots are often accused. Occasionally, take five minutes of Scaloni, world champion with Argentina, semifinalist today, leader and intelligent tamer of a dressing room with a lot of ego (26 in total) and the ideal companion of Leo Messi, the best player of all time, all without making a fuss about it.
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An Argentina-England match is approaching, a high-risk game, the epicenter of many sensitivities due to the Falklands War, Maradona’s hand, and several other scuffles, a temptation to dramatize, overexcite, and carry the rivalry into dangerous territory. Still fresh from qualifying for the semifinals against Switzerland, with epic flair for a change (that’s where Argentines live), and with heart rates skyrocketing, Scaloni had the ability to calm his mind, put on an Epictetus face and, after asking to turn off the air conditioning because he wasn’t wearing his “campera,” say with a teacher’s expression: “It’s a football match, eh. A football match, period. My message is that we don’t look for anything else, there’s nothing more than that.”
Classical stoicism holds that only educated people are free. Maybe that’s why Scaloni seems to float above issues others consider insurmountable worries.
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I will pass this on to my grandchildren when I have them.
