When Messi (35 years old) was born, Rosario was not exactly a quiet city. Lionel was still in his mother’s womb when thieves broke into a downtown home and Three women were stabbed to death: the maid and housewives, who were Fito Páez’s grandmother and aunt.
The Argentine National Team had just been champion in Mexico 86 with an inimitable Maradona and nobody thought then that those violent times –city of poor heartswrote Páez- they could still get worse.
When Messi went to live in Barcelona in the year 2000, Rosario already had 6 crimes per 100,000 inhabitantsan average higher than the country.
Now that rate is 18.
Since then, the population of Rosario has grown by 10 percent and the murders 300 percent.
Now there is triple the number of crimes in Rosario than when Messi still dreamed of making his debut at Newell’s.
Emiliano’s Mar del Plata fared no better Back Martínez (30 years old), son of a fisherman and a domestic worker.
Back -unknown to most Argentine soccer fans until last year- he left for Buenos Aires as a very young boy with a dream on his back that ended up coming true in England through sheer will and, like Messi, from an adolescent exodus.
When Emiliano was born, one in four people from Mar del Plata was poor. now it is one in three.
Unemployment in the city went from 6 to almost 9 percent in these years.
Although the summers explode, one after the other, Mar del Plata has poorer and more unemployed than 30 years ago.
Marcos The egg Acuña (31 years old, nicknamed that way because as a boy he was full of bumps) embodies part of the wealth of this Selection, which is going beyond football quality: when he won the Copa América, Acuña celebrated with a shirt that had the figure of a butterfly and the word Luzthe name of a 14-year-old girl who had died the previous month, the daughter of a Racing photographer.
The egg He raised the Cup accompanying the pain of his friend.
Acuña was born in Zapala, Neuquén, a point in the immeasurable depth of the Patagonian steppe where the best chance of employment continues to be a position in the State or hard work in the lime mines.
same as when he was born The eggthe miners still waiting a law that recognizes their right to retire before the age of 60.
The latest report from the UCA Social Observatory reveals that, without social assistance plans, net poverty would reach 50% of Argentines.
A diary investigation As of Spain on the economic situation of the countries whose teams played in the World Cup in Qatar places Argentina in the last third.
According to GDP per capita, Argentina had 22 countries ahead of you and only 9 behind. Among them, the 5 African representatives.
However, the Selection climbed 15 places if the market value of its roster of players was measured.
In that ranking, Argentina was in the rank 7 about 32.
A review of the family origin of the holders of the Selection increases the proportion over half of poor Argentines. At least 8 of the 11 They come from humble homes.
The same goes for those who have not yet entered the field.
During this year, four out of ten households where half of the Argentine urban population lives -and 90% of the relatives of the players– received some kind of social assistance.
Without this help, indigence would not be 8 but 20% and poverty would climb from 43 to 50%, according to the UCA.
According to the study, the “new poor” They are from popular sectors, vulnerable to crises, lack of work and inflationalmost a constant in the Argentine reality.
That is the cradle of our footballers.
There are thousands of stories in that repetitive Argentine niche, like that of the metalworker who lost his job when the factory closed and, while his son was born in the heart of San Martín, supported his family by doing odd jobs on Maciel Island.
That changarín is called Raúl Fernández and he is the father of Enzo (21 years old), the boy who flew from River to Benfica and won the title in Qatar coming on from the substitute bench.
There, in Doha, his father recounted that he thought “face and kick” when his son received a pass to the edge of the area and nailed it at an angle in front of Mexico.
How many precarious workers have a revenge like this?
When Enzo was born, in 2001, the Buenos Aires suburbs had 385 settlements and shantytowns. Fifteen years later there was already more than 1,100.
In the year 2000, the reading comprehension results for 15-year-old students in the PISA tests placed Argentina in second place of Latin America, behind Mexico.
In 2018 it fell to seventh place.
Over the course of five World Cups, Argentina fell five places in Education.
A National Team that advances in a World Cup is a team that puts an entire country behind a huge and shared illusion.
A joy giant and legitimate like those of 78 and 86. Or the dashed hopes in the lost finals of 1930, 1990 or 2014.
But if Switzerland is not a worse country since Tuesday – when its Selection left Qatar after losing 6 to 1 -, neither is a Selection that triumphs a country that wins.
That real victory could begin to be built by working so that when the 2026 World Cup arrives there are no more crimes in Argentina, more children without going to school or poorer than now.
Whatever happens this Friday of renewed and explosive passion, against the Netherlands.
