Madrid, June 10, 2026
Granjuán, my dear, I’m nervous.
Surprised, comforted: almost four years ago, when we said goodbye to Qatar, I was convinced that we would never meet again in these football disputes. , so I assumed that would be my last World Cup. You don’t know the joy I felt three or four months ago, when it seemed clear that I could still write to you on this one: it was one of those rare moments when you think you’ve managed to gain a few months, a few meters. So I’ll type a little, dictate, screw people to watch the games at those insane hours, and I guess I’ll be able to do it. And, above all, even if I have to read your gibberish and write mine, I think I’m going to enjoy it a lot. I’m already enjoying it.
But hey, enough of the nonsense. This afternoon, in your town of 25 million overflowing bodies, in that cauldron where smiles are hardly believable but hearts are not, this strange contemporary invention begins that summons so many of us – two, three billion – to think about the same thing for six weeks. It’s brutal, it’s strange, it’s a little pathetic – and it’s true.
But their skills don’t end there: the same show that unites us all in front of its screen enhances our separations. Today begins the Great Festival of the Homelands: the brief period in which this fatal invention is imposed on all of us. We will be patriots: the vast majority will have no hesitation in supporting the team of the country where they were born. I, without going any further, and so many like me, who reject the great patriotic trap, who know that countries are a fiction created to control and screw us, who try to think beyond those limits and feel beyond those limits, will spend these days locked in them: proud of them, concentrated on them, moved by them. Without going any further, I always ask myself why the hell it matters to me that a millionaire from Santa Fe or a millionaire from Córdoba puts a leather ball in a net hung from three poles: how can it be that such a minutiae provokes in me the emotions it provokes in me. But these days what prevails is not only the nonsense of football – which is already enough nonsense – but this much worse: that of the country. I want Argentina to win, Granjuán, and I suppose that you want – even from the implausibility – for Mexico to win: why do we want such things? We could, I suppose, produce dozens of arguments, some even intelligent, two or three perhaps even elegant, but really: why do we want such nonsense so much?
Anyway: the tournament is starting and it’s time for us to stop talking about our lowest instincts – even if it becomes difficult. We know it, we always knew it, and in general we manage to hide it: We know it, we always knew it, and we play the game because we like to watch the game, and if for that we have to act stupid, we gladly act stupid. But this year they are making it very difficult for us.
In truth, they already have several, but each time they push a little more. The penultimate World Cup happened in Putin’s dictatorship, the last one in that of the Qatari sheikhs and this one, now, in Trump’s macabre circus, with the hygienic collaboration of two countries as worthy as yours and Canada, but with the obvious mark of the boss of FIFA: the infantinization football has created a pattern where everything, absolutely everything, is explained by money.
And everything that is known for now is very ugly: from the inconvenience of approaching, even on television, that country dominated by a violent madman, to the prices of accommodation and transportation and the FIFA scam with Uberized tickets, a great triumph of the market economy that has turned football stands into spas for bored rich people, wealthy politicians and some influencers with or without houses. And this is not to mention the intolerable injustice of Cape Verde and Curaçao playing but not Balochistan.
So again we start a World Cup saying no, I don’t care so much about this one anymore, I don’t think I’m going to pay attention to it. I’ve heard it a lot in recent weeks, and I suppose it sounds familiar to you too: I have the feeling that I’ve heard it at the beginning of each of the fifteen World Cups that I’ve seen so far. I suspect that in a few days no one will remember Trump like no one remembered in Qatar, during the quarterfinals, of the hundreds of workers who had died building stadiums. Since the man can remember he has specialized in doing the opposite, just in case. And in this case, I suspect, it is the only way forward.
But hey, I won’t bother you any more. I suppose you are already putting on your tricolor cap, preparing to march towards the great Azteca stadium. You don’t know how much I envy you. And also South Africa, if it does not manage to change the round one for an oval one, it should not be a great danger. So nothing, long live Mexico, brother, and I hope that soon we can talk about football, which, after all, is what matters.
Or not?
A hug,
m.
