There was no room for anything else this Sunday (18) in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. The sunny morning was used to get around to a public screen (the main one in Palermo), a bar or a friend’s house.
Groups of young people walked screaming and jumping through the streets, while middle-aged tourists preferred the air conditioning in bars.
Outside, there was even a dispute over a space to put your face in the glass and follow the match on the big screen of the establishments.
The atmosphere was tense until Messi opened the scoring with the penalty goal. In the second try, only the songs from the World Cup were heard. Optimism took over the environment. Until silence settled in the city again when France drew the match.
In the streets of Recoleta, Argentina’s third goal, already in overtime, brought residents to the terraces in droves, chanting “Messi! Ar-gen-ti-na.” When France drew again, taking the match to penalties, profanity and evocations of Diego Maradona were heard.
“In 2014 [na final contra a Alemanha] I wasn’t so confident. Today everything is different for me, from the beginning I think we look like champions, even when France tied”, said Iñaki Romeo, 26.
Others were more nervous. Friends Suzana and Madalena couldn’t bear to watch the penalties, which gave victory to alviceleste. “Now you can look”, celebrated the second, when the dispute ended.
“It was a heart attack final,” said Giuliano Castro, 62, celebrating shirtless and hugging an Argentine flag. “Messi deserves it!”
At Fan Fest, a space set up in Palermo with a large screen that was full in all Argentina games, there was a rush at the end of the kicks. The crowd left on foot or by car for the Obelisk, where the main celebrations in the city take place.
The last few days have been vertiginous for Argentine fans who, without having been able to go to Qatar, invented their ways of supporting and encouraging their compatriots in some way.
Traditional cafes and restaurants were decorated with uniforms and elements of the national team. The humblest children, who didn’t have money to buy a shirt for the national team, painted a white or blue one with a marker with Messi’s name and the number 10 and thus played football in the street.
There were those who saw moving images like these on the networks or on TV and organized crowdfunding to buy the idol’s official uniforms for children.
When talking about Argentine football, two concepts must be mentioned, the “mufa” and the “cabala”.
Mufa is everything you can’t do because you think it’s bad luck or because the last time you did it, your team or the national team lost. Or even because you think it might go wrong.
These days, I went to get something at the pharmacy. A man next to me was asking for an allergy pill from the shelf. The attendant took one, and he got angry and said “no, no, no, the one on the side, that one is upside down”. Upon realizing that I was looking at him in astonishment, he said to me, smiling: “You know, sometimes things are defined by details.”
In her column in the newspaper El PaÃs, the excellent columnist Leila Guerriero masterfully told how, in national team matches, her father is forbidden to watch the games, which he did not even show up, because if he glances at the screen, according to his family, Argentina scores.
The last time was when he was watching “The Godfather”. Streaming crashed and his eyes crossed quickly with what was happening in the game. The teenage son carried his father outside to run with the dogs until the game was over.
The cabal, a kind of ritual for luck, preferred by Porteños this World Cup has been surrounding old ladies who are partying in the streets with the new hit of the Cup, “La Abuela La, La, La”.
The first was Cristina, 69, inhabitant of Liniers, who said she didn’t even see the games, because she doesn’t have the patience, but she gets so euphoric that she takes to the streets to celebrate with a flag in her hand.
The first time she went out, she was surrounded by neighborhood kids, who “composed” the little song at the time. Now, the craze is repeated in several neighborhoods in Argentina. Taking a lively lady to the corner and singing around her was the latest way that Argentines have invented to celebrate.
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