My niece's tears
A new journalistic genre has been around for a while now: sports columnists writing about their kids, which I've been ranting about for being repetitive, corny, and hackneyed. Until Luka Modrić announced he was leaving Real Madrid and, as luck would have it, I was having lunch with my 14-year-old niece, Martina. As soon as she found out, she burst into tears, and there was no way to console her. Everything we told her—that Luka, like family, is now grown up, that it's just the way life is, that she should reflect on how much fun she had watching him, that he still has so much more to enjoy—was useless. Because she simply felt sorry. "I don't know a Madrid without Modric," she once said. On Saturday, she went to the Bernabéu with a banner: "Thank you for everything, Lukita. Today isn't a player leaving, a legend is leaving."
All this is relevant because in an ultra-capitalist world, with removable fetishes and the vertigo of the 15-second TikTok, there's a new generation that looks a lot like the one before, the one that always did. And it happens at Real Madrid, at Barça men's and women's, at Athletic, and wherever you look and pay attention: football has its codes, its rituals, its own heartbeat, and there are players who captivate, connect, who become role models rather than idols, and to whom time only adds shine, not dust.
The extraordinary connection between Barcelona fans and Flick's team and the gang of teenagers is proof of this. The way it's been celebrated, the euphoria; another. The youth, the nerve, the unconsciousness, how unabashedly happy they appear on and off the pitch, is captivating. Joy, damn it, a new hope. We're all covered for the rest. That's why it's so important to know how to say goodbye, pay tribute, and give heartfelt thanks, so that the goodbye lives up to the legacy, the legacy, and the happiness they've given you during a period of your life.
Let's celebrate all the Martinas for whom football also creates an identity, a community, a way of being and acting, a way of understanding success and failure in a sport where you usually lose more than you win and that always gives you a second chance. Let's celebrate laughing and crying. Yes, crying. Because football, and life, is this.