Pineapples and brawls, that irresistible moment

Who was the one who said “just as I tell you one thing, I tell you the other”? I don’t remember. But today this column is going to have a similar tone. I have a great ambivalence. I think one thing and, at the same time, its opposite. And I agree with both. As if there were a kind of dialectic without synthesis, a head-on clash between two antagonistic ideas that sparks when they collide, makes the ideas themselves crackle. Here is the first of those ideas that, in truth, is not an idea, but a taste, a pleasure, a recognition: I really enjoy when the players hold on to each other. I love that there are brawls, shoves, shoves, whirlpools, grabs, threats, kicks and rackets. The most glorious of football is expressed there! In first division matches, and even in those of national teams (as in Argentina-Holland in the last World Cup) when that happens, the neighborhood, amateur, naive dimension of soccer reappears. A group of millionaires (or on the way to becoming one), advised by all kinds of agents and image specialists, sponsored by the biggest brands in the world, admired by millions of people, suddenly pretend to return to the square in front of to the team from the neighborhood next door, and everything ends badly. I mean, it ends well!

Of course there are different types of brawls. Some pathetic, like Gallardo scratching Pato Abbondanzieri in the 2004 Libertadores. Others sublime, like Maradona’s flying kick to a Basque in a Barcelona-Atlético Bilbao match, in the 1984 Copa del Rey final, on the pitch of the Real Madrid. The one from River-Boca last Sunday was half lukewarm, a lot of noise and few nuts, they broke minutes without anything really happening.

But then, as soon as I express these ideas, an opposite feeling strongly arises in me. But the opposite of “pineapple goes, pineapple comes, the boys are entertained” is not Fair Play, which I don’t care about. To me, Fair Play winners are the same as McDonald’s employee of the month winners. No, the opposite of brawls resides in Carlos Bianchi’s phrase: “I like intelligent players.” Thinking about that phrase, it can almost be said that Boca is made up of a group of fools. The fans of Boca could be fed up with this group of rather mediocre players clinging to pineapples all the time, foolishly (and that this time Benedetto was missing). It is true, yes, that in the 2021 Libertadores matches against Atlético Mineiro, Boca was robbed as I rarely saw (I have no proof, but I do have the conviction that the hand of the macrismo in Conmebol was behind it to prevent the management of Riquelme won the Libertadores), but that does not justify a team that fights every time it loses an important game (which has been happening to Boca too often, I mean, losing important games). With expelled, with suspended, with the risk of being in crisis again. Intelligence is also, and above all, not taking a stupid penalty at the last minute. Boca is not a team of sore losers, but of less intelligent losers.