Football and literature: grandchildren of Cervantes and nephews of Iniesta

Agredano is just one more member of this motley crew of poets, editors, philosophers, journalists and heterodox physics reporters who defend that impossible love between soccer and literature. “There is nothing more literary than a tie. A tie can taste like victory, smell like defeat, it can be epic, insufferable, deserved, unfair…”, The rocky Pablo García Casado, a finalist for the National Poetry Award and known on the pitch for his defensive vehemence, warned at the Casa Árabe.

fact and fiction

For the sportsman Nacho Carretero, writer and journalist between party and party, “Reality in football is so incredible that sometimes we are forced to fictionalize it because it is too perfect to be believable.” Sitting next to him, at the Instituto Cervantes, agreed Emilio Sánchez Mediavilla, editor of Libros del KO, as well as a writer, who in his day opted to make his passion for soccer visible in the collection ‘Illustrated Hooligans’, the space that has best paired the literary-football pairing.

The Germans arrived in Madrid led by the philosopher Wolfang Eilenberger, a renowned thinker of international stature who has been ruling the game of his people for years with his velvet left foot. It all started in 2003, when Italy challenged the Germans, an invitation from which their team was born. Twenty years later the ritual was repeated, with Spain being challenged by the Teutons to measure themselves at the last Frankfurt Book Fair, where those of Cervantes opened with defeat (3-1). For this reason, the Madrid match was seen as a revenge against the literary Mannschaft.

In the Spanish squad, trained by Pedro Zuazua and captained by the ‘perico’ Carlos Marañón, the Vitoria-born poet Carmen Berasategui and the Santander-born Marta San Miguel also showed off their good footing. to which was added Irene Lozano, former Secretary of State for Sport and current director of the Casa Árabe. For this second game, the team was reinforced with Jacinto Elá, former Espanyol player and author of ‘Ulises: Diary of a Poor Soccer Player’, and the Sevillian film director and writer Chema Martínez, in addition to recovering two last-minute casualties in Frankfurt, the aforementioned Agredano and the one who writes.

The match showed that nuances are in the gray and that there are few more fertile fields to build different stories about the same event than football. La Cervantina opened its record of victories with a 5-2 in which its bench and that tiki-taca who has left the senior team, but continues to permeate the game of the lettered team, were key. Also noteworthy was the participation as a referee of another writer, the irreverent Edu Galán.

After the match, the football discussions moved to the bar of a crowded tavern in Lavapiés where the Teutons gave a good account of the anchovies in vinegar, while the hosts of Cervantes opted for the torreznos. Toasts multiplied for Cervantes and Goethe, but also for Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Valdano, Villorio, Fontanarrosa or Camus himself.

Is it played as written?

The night lasted until the dawn of Sunday, a day in which several of the writers who stepped on the grass of the La Chopera field in the El Retiro park, went through the Fair to sign copies of their works to the enthusiastic readers who this year they have filled the Madrid Book Fair. AND The weekend ended with both teams summoning a playoff game in neutral territory, from which we agreed that Mallorca would be the optimal place.

During the different debates, colloquiums and talks that took place around this literary-sporting event, some conclusions were drawn that reached a certain degree of unanimity among the participants. The first, that “both football and books have the ability to take us back to childhood”. Something that Carmen Berasategui verbalized with a delicious verse by Dylan Thomas: “The ball that I threw when I played in the park has not yet touched the ground.” The second statement that aroused the general quorum, more prosaic, warned the following: “If you want to meet a person, play soccer with them.” However, this last conclusion opened another heated and spicy debate among this horde of football writers or literalized footballers: Is it played as written?