Three in the afternoon today in New York, when the World Cup final kicks off, is the right moment for extraterrestrials to finally land and analyze the behavior of the dominant species on planet Earth.
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Thanks to their advanced technology, they will observe that, except for some lost tribes in the Amazon or half of that pagan nation called the United States, almost all Homo sapiens will have their eyes glued religiously to a primitive device called a television.
Their first conclusion, or theory, will be the one once proposed by a writer named Geoff Dyer. That football is “a cultural and sporting phenomenon so absorbing that visitors from another galaxy could logically conclude that our planet acquired its shape in deference to the ball around which weekly life and the cycle of the seasons revolve.”
Impeccably rational beings, the newcomers from a superior civilization will – in nanoseconds – analyze the rules of the sport and all the matches played in the history of the World Cups, and will be perplexed by how often the results do not correspond to logic or justice.
The original error – or sin – is that referees are granted divine powers, but they are as fallible as the rest of these strange creatures, humans, slaves more to passion than to reason. Instead of acting together for the planetary good, they divide into tribes, invent things called flags, and understand no greater glory or happiness than defeating those who wear other colors.
War is a constant of humanity. Football, a metaphor for it: more benign than war with bullets, but emerging from the same feelings of hatred towards others, a phenomenon also known as nationalism. An X-ray of the current World Cup will offer the extraterrestrials more insight. Particularly revealing will be last Wednesday’s semifinal between England and Argentina, two countries that not long ago went to real war.
That conflict was described by an unusually lucid human, Jorge Luis Borges, as “two bald men fighting over a comb.” The same definition could be attributed to most of the war massacres organized over the centuries on the blue planet. But in this case, the absurd reached unknown extremes.
Football emerges from the same feelings of hatred towards others as war with bullets
About a thousand people died thanks to the dispute between two countries over inhospitable pieces of land in the middle of an ocean, whose value to both sides is nothing more than the fruit of the vanity that governs human behavior. They find it hard to admit, so they invent arguments to dignify their mental smallness. The Malvinas must be Argentine due to geographical proximity (1,800 kilometers from the capital, Buenos Aires); the Falklands (12,800 kilometers from London) must be English because of what they call democratic fair play.
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Argentina lost that battle, but, of infinitely greater importance to its citizens, it beat England in a football match held four years later. This variant of war by other means was fought again this week, Argentina won again, and the Argentines, and their players, celebrated what psychoanalysts who abound in that country would call the imaginary recovery in the collective subconscious of the meager Malvinas territory.
In today’s final, Argentina reappears and its rival will be Spain, the once colonial motherland. Another opportunity for extraterrestrials to reflect on the habits of our species. The curiosity that so much depends on putting a little ball between three posts will extend, beyond Argentina and Spain, to the entire world. The four billion plus who will watch the match will interpret it as a moral battle, as always with a football match. Mine are the good guys; yours, the bad ones.
In the final, most viewers will be with Spain, but Israel and Trump will side with Argentina
A quick intercontinental review will tell the alien analysts that the vast majority of viewers have chosen their tribe and will want Spain to beat Argentina. Israel, however, will be with Argentina for recognizably coherent reasons (the Argentine government applauds the killings in Gaza); half of Bangladesh will be with Argentina for absolutely inexplicable reasons, and the great planetary referee, Donald Trump, will also be fervently with Argentina.
On one hand, because the orange king loves his soulmate in the Casa Rosada, Javier Milei, and supports his claim to the famous Malvinas. On the other, because, of all the countries in the world, Spain is the one he abhors the most. Russia, China, North Korea: not a word against them. About Spain, he has said in the last two weeks that it is a “terrible partner” and that the Spanish are “bad people, beyond remedy.”
The rest of the world will side with Spain in today’s final partly because the rest of the world, or 90% of it, considers Trump terrible, bad, and beyond remedy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And also, or more so, because during the weeks of this World Cup, a perception has been created, justified or not, that Argentine players are cheaters and that the Argentine fans display an offensive arrogance, more an air of fascist-like militancy. Messi, the most idolized deity on the planet, will offer a counterbalance to this prejudice against them, but not enough to tip the scales in favor of Argentina.
This is the analysis of the situation that the extraterrestrials will have to have reached, with forensic coldness. If Spain wins and Trump has to hand the cup to its captain, their sophisticated devices will measure seismic impacts thanks to the laughter that will travel around the world. If Argentina wins, they will detect some solemn applause for its captain, universally recognized as as responsible for his team’s victories as Achilles was for his in the Trojan War, yet another of the bloodbaths to which human passions have led in the last ten thousand years under the sun.
Most logically, of course, the extraterrestrials would not wait for the final whistle. Human comedy entertains us, but for any civilized being it is a reason to run flying to the beyond.
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