It is said that this is the World Cup of gigantism. Forty-eight teams, three different continental countries, and thousands of kilometers of time zones that cross between the futuristic concrete of Atlanta and the mystical atmosphere of the Aztec. On a giant board, for just thirty-nine days, football seems bigger than the human being. It becomes a geopolitical and financial engine at its best, trying to swallow the planet.
But there is always a cost to this gigantism. Excess leaves footprints that history repeats, championship after championship, between vanity, megalomanism and waste. We don’t need to go far down memory lane. Do you remember the million-dollar investment in Portugal’s stadiums for Euro 2004? Those concrete monuments that time, in some cases, condemned to silence and abandonment? This wealth that football displays lives, almost always, with its back turned to the local reality.
Nothing new.
But football is more than its infrastructures or its own History. It is a living phenomenon. Over the decades, football stopped being a closed, gray and exclusive place, and evolved into something universal and genderless. Football and passion no longer have a single heir. Football and passion belong to everyone, in a fluid way, reflecting a world that he too had to change.
That’s why, no matter how much we try to expand the financial scale of things, the game insists on staying in our most intimate lives. At the end of the day, no fan wants to know about FIFA reports or the flight routes between Seattle and Mexico City. The theme is measured by time. By our own timeline.
The World Cups are like time markers in our lives. They are like bookmarks that remind us exactly where we were, how old we were and who we were when the starting whistle of a certain game sounded. When we remember a goal, we inevitably remember the room where we saw it. From those who still sat with us at the table and who have already left. Or someone who hadn’t even been born yet. There is an emotional uniform that is renewed every four years. Whether FIFA likes it or not.
While the map spans an enormous North America, our view continues to be micro. Distances can be administrative, cold and corporate, but our memory seeks the same as always. The sacred pretext to stop the routine clock.
It’s about creating instant bonds with someone you don’t know, and who you’ll probably never see again. Just by sitting in the same kiosk, with our eyes glued to the screen that broadcasts the game from our favorite club. From our homeland. It is this line that unites the citizens of a country in a single moment. The pride of seeing our team win, no matter how big or small our country is, how many defeats or victories we have had, not even how much money was buried in the stadiums.
Ultimately, what stands out is our identity, knowing exactly who we are. And with whom we want to share the time that passes.
