A few years ago, after a stay in Australia, a magazine commissioned me to write a series of articles about that country’s soccer league, the so-called A-League. It was not easy to understand their schedule (there are three rounds and a play-off), but I followed the games online and got information through the media in Melbourne and Sydney. Few Europeans came to Australia and I soon realized that its stars lived in another reality. One of the A-League scorers was the Albanian Besart Berisha, champion with Brisbane Roar, but he rarely played with his country’s national team: the trips from the antipodes were too long.
Recently I have been thinking about that league again, neither more nor less than watching science fiction series. In War of the Worlds, on Disney Plus, time jumps, quantum universes, and parallel worlds are common. It made me think that in today’s football the boom of the leagues of the United States, Saudi Arabia or Qatar functions as one of these alternative realities. With money as a safe conduct, second-rate players or stars in the sunset experience that leap into the void as a mirage of youth.
A distant galaxy
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It is the multiverse of football. As if in the reality in which they live Messi, Busquets y Alba in Miami, or Cristiano, Neymar, Benzema and so many others in Saudi Arabia, there would be another gravity and time would pass more slowly. Many goals are celebrated, unknown defenders mark the stars from afar and with admiration. Records will be broken, although that football seems to us from another galaxy so far away that we ignore it.
This week Inter Miami has been eliminated from the MLS and will not play in the final phase of the league. This means that Messi and company will not play again with the team that pays them until February 2024. There are many months without a rhythm of competition, only training and playing friendlies or occasionally with the national team. What a waste of talent. Maybe that’s why there are already those who dream that Messi I returned to Barça in these months, but I fear that right now, among the rubble of the Camp Nou, it is impossible to find the door to the time machine.
2023-10-11 15:35:27
#football #multiverse
