The next Panini album will have 112 pages because it will contain no less than 980 figurines, all this because the next North American World Cup will host 48 teams. That is to say, if the disaster that Infantino and his friends are plotting so that 64 countries attend the 2030 Cup occurs, the Italian publisher will have to publish not an album or a booklet, but a notebook the width of a Baldor (yes, that damned book that tormented our high school).
The real drama is that with 64, 48 or 32, it is most likely that Peru will not be among the next classified.
On Friday, while the draw was taking place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, he remembered that of Spain 82, artisanal and full of solemnities, which
It was attended by a teenage prince of Asturias and those who years later would be the protagonists of the biggest corruption scandal in sport, Joao Havelange and Sepp Blatter.
That time we saw with surprise how we were joining Poland again and we thought, naively, that we would avenge the defeat suffered four years before, that we could get a draw against Italy and we would beat the Cameroonians with our eyes closed.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi wearing the shirts of their national team. (Photo: Agencies).
Then I thought about the draw for Russia and that emotional rush that took over everyone when Diego Armando Maradona brought up Peru’s name and we went out of our way to speculate about what would happen when we had to face the France of Griezmann and Mbappé.
Those times were just hiccups. For a few years now we have returned to normal and once again we will see the elite compete from afar, living in strange countries, after failing in the easiest qualifying rounds in history. If he were among us, Pocho would try to ease our pain by saying that at the Kennedy Center everyone told him that they would miss “the Peruvian touch,” while asking about Nene Cubillas. This time there wasn’t even an accredited Peruvian journalist to tell us a lie. In the World Cup where Curacao, New Zealand and Uzbekistan will be present, we will even miss El Veco locked in a Miami set with his paper mache Teleport.
The most schizoid moment of the ceremony was when Infantino, with his Teleferia salesman’s smile, presented the ‘FIFA Peace Prize’ to President Trump, in an unexpected gesture of involuntary humor, in keeping with the place where the ceremony took place. Let us not forget that the Kennedy Center, in addition to being a venue for art, music and dance, has been the scene of tributes to great comedians such as Lucille Ball, Johnny Carson and Billy Crystal.
Perhaps the only consolation we have left is to witness the last World Cup of two of the men who set the tone for football in the last 20 years: Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. It’s going to be difficult not to see them again.
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