I’ve cried over fútbol three times. Have spent way too many tears over 11 men and a damn ball.
The first time was 24 June 2006. Mexico vs. Argentina. Round of 16. Back when Ronaldinho and FC Barcelona made me fall in love with the sport.
I remember yelling at the screen, as if Oswaldo Sanchez could hear the orders of a 12-year-old half a world away. I had rarely been so elated by sports before. Maybe only Nintendo 64 Goldeneye brought me so much joy and equally painful heartbreak.
When Maxi Rodriguez’s incredible volley went in and sank Mexican hopes, I was broken. I was in tears. My mother, who rarely puts her hope in fútbol, embraced me. My uncle Pedro whom I love dearly and who never misses a chance to tell me when he saw the mythical Hugo Sanchez score that chilena for Real Madrid, simply told me “I’ve been on this roller coaster for years… I’m still waiting.”
The second time was 29 June 2014, this time against Holland.
Same storyline, another 120 minutes of utter anguish. And obviously a BS penalty brought on by 5-star diver Arjen Robben. You hope against hope that the opposing player will just find a way to f*&k it up. That on that day, the wind might actually hear you, help you out. It rarely ever goes that way. And yet I couldn’t help the tears this time either.
In 2015, I was in Buenos Aires for the Copa América final between Chile and Argentina.
I never in a million years imagined sporting an Argentina jersey. My 12-year-old self would have given me the finger. And yet there we were, the foreigners in Buenos Aires. When Argentina eventually lost on penalties, I didn’t cry but the entire city and weather did for a week. Inconsolable. Cold. Bleak. You think Mexicans take football losses hard… for my fellow Argentines it was a goddamn tragedy.
We’re so used to this in Mexico. We still cling on, in the eternal search for the games where for once, for f**king once, maybe we will just win. As we tend to say “jugamos como nunca, perdimos como siempre… we played like never before, we lost like always.”
We trade it all for a moment where the song and stanzas and the rhymes we’re used to won’t matter. Where we break a new chapter into the mould by smashing the ghosts we have created ourselves to haunt and torment us.
It’s why I have found England football culture so endearing. For a footballing nation that prides itself on its domestic league and its players, it’s only really lifted up a major trophy once and back when television was still in black and white. Sorry, just facts.
The only way the English can deal with this is through their humor which reminds me keenly of our Mexican sarcasm.
England has “It’s Coming Home”, we have “Si Mexico ganara el mundial”. England has it’s “I Still Believe” with Southgate missing the penalty against Germany while we have “lo bueno es que eso nunca va a pasar, porque Mexico jamas va a ganar el mundial.”*
If mexico were to win the world cup there “would be thousands of drunkards in the Centro Historico… businesses would have to close… there would not be enough police to calm the national joy… it would be like an eternal carnaval…”
Different languages but the rhymes, the sardonic humor, the self-deprecation, and yet the everlasting hope that somehow, somehow, it will be different this time never goes away.
And so when the entire country put its hopes and dreams and curses and pressure and souls on that talented 19-year-old, for a brief, brief second, I let myself be carried away along with the hundreds of pints and friends and strangers around me clutching their shirts, their arms, their tomorrows.
By the time that last whistle blew, we all felt it again. I couldn’t look my friends in the eyes. I didn’t have to. The floor became the focus of attention. Perhaps we had dropped our hearts somewhere on the hardwood tiles.
A long road, glimmers of hope, rays of victory and yet so dastardly close it’s only an arm’s length away. I didn’t think I would cry but when the entire weight of the moment hit like a hammer on a 55-year-old anvil, the floodgates opened. It started to rain in London. The night gave way to the darker sides of people’s instincts.
At this point, it’s not that I’m used to my team - or whatever team I can fake myself into - losing. It’s more the wager we place on hope, on randomness, on fate if it ever existed. Whatever god you think exists. Try as we might to shield ourselves against heartbreak and the sting that follows it into the next-day-sobriety, it’s worth it, as questionable a practice as that is.
“It’s just a sport” is simply too easy a cop-out. But damn is it enticing.
*”the good thing is that none of this will happen, because Mexico will never win the World Cup.”