Deportes

This is just football, but enough because football is everything. It is politics, sociology, and economics. It explains a society, the anesthesia, it unites and divides us, it drives us to put our arms in the trash and find the witch’s mirror, the one that tells us we are the most handsome, stupid, and generous, but, at the same time, that there are others just as handsome, stupid, and generous. And also, when the case arises, racist, irresponsible, and cruel. Belonging to a club, to a national team, these days defines us, integrates us, prevents us from answering unanswerable questions, places us in rituals and calendars tied to curiosity, to the amazement of the game as a life lesson, its spectacularization.

France ended up swallowed by a whirlwind. Germany didn’t even come close to competing. Brazil is no longer Brazil. Italy didn’t even travel. The World Cup waits for no one. Only the best. This is how the most anticipated final has been shaped, and judging by what has been seen over the past month in the stands of the stadiums spread across Canada, the United States, and Mexico, the duel between the two biggest crowd favorites. Spain and Argentina. Challenger and champion. De la Fuente and Scaloni. Lamine Yamal and Leo Messi – long live La Masia –. All, with the Manhattan skyline in the background. What a final.

The last training session of Spain before playing the World Cup final against Argentina this Sunday has been disrupted by the bad weather hitting New York this Saturday. In fact, the session that was supposed to take place on the grass has been suspended and all the work has been indoors, in the gym.

Desire is an animal impossible to defeat with the weapons of logic. Chance, mocking and deceitful, it is skillful at baiting traps. One of its favorite games is the paradox of loyalties. Wanting one thing and the opposite. These cases have poor resolution. Winning is losing and losing…

The World Cup final this Sunday reaches everywhere, it enters everywhere. Also in the newsroom of La Vanguardia. Journalists Joaquín Luna and Luis Federico Florio offer their view of the match from the perspective of their badge, the first Spanish and the second Argentine.

Wanting to praise him, President Donald Trump exposed his own lie and the hypocrisy and falsehood of his loyal friend Gianni Infantino this Friday.

Far from our land, we remain passionate and superstitious people, full of rituals. Of senseless rites. At home, we believe that winning depends on the flag being next to the TV in the same position it was on the first day. That one of the dozen of us who gather to…

Strong bonds: common language, the Simeone dynasty, the grievances of the Malvinas and Gibraltar islands

Everyone is talking about the photograph in which a twenty-something Leo Messi and a Lamine Yamal just a few months old appear together, taken almost 20 years ago. The Argentine has become the best footballer in history; the Catalan, the star of Barça and the Spanish national team. Both will compete this Sunday for the World Cup. The coincidence is so incredible that it has generated unprecedented attention. The mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, thought it was the work of artificial intelligence, and Jimmy Fallon, on ‘The Tonight Show’, dedicated his famous monologue to it.

16 years and a week ago Andrés Iniesta (Fuentealbilla, 1984) was the living image of happiness. He was sitting in seat D, row 12 of a charter that had departed from Johannesburg bound for Madrid. He was wearing the Spanish national team jersey with the number 6 on the back. And he was recounting, still fresh in his memory, the play of the goal that allowed La Roja to enter the club of world champions. Seven hours had passed since the moment and the man from La Mancha had still not seen his goal replayed. Unthinkable nowadays, where everything moves at the speed of light, but possible then. Iniesta now speaks to La Vanguardia from Dubai, where he is about to start the season with his first team as a coach, Gulf FC of the United Arab Emirates. From there he recalls his memories of 2010 and projects his analysis for this Sunday’s final.