While in Europe football is boiling on the fields and in the stands thanks to a great and even Euro Cup, with more or less football, but with an emotion that shows how alive the king of sport is at a cultural level in the old continentboth in the stands and on the field, leads us to the first conclusion, the European Union’s commitment to distance itself from sports entertainment in the American ecosystem, even if capitalism hacks it into the shareholders of the Premier clubs, as it will continue to do. with La Liga, it makes the old continent the global football epicenter. Let’s watch out for this fallacy. We have football, others have property.
Meanwhile, in another latitude, in the Copa América, the relevance, in my opinion, has been monopolized again the maestro Bielsa who has surpassed the game. Someone who should not be considered one of the others, a character who transcends his sporting results, his behaviors, his attitudes, but above all for your ideas and thoughts. A paranormal type for the brilliant normality, sometimes abnormality, in which football reflexively moves.
His statements, his responses in the press conferences are life lessons, doctrines in mini-conference format, ignoring the clichés and obvious answers, the usual among football fans of one continent or another. More Bielsistas should be born, grow and develop to contribute self-criticism to the evolution, not at all Darwinian, of the football planet.. We could start with his quotes regarding how to compete: “It is a mistake to think that to preserve a result the opposite of what has been done to achieve it must be done.” How many comebacks in the Euro Cup quarterfinals have occurred under those parameters?
But let’s get to his non-sports reflections. Because Bielsa feels like a teacher, he is a physical education teacher, a frustrated and failed footballer, that is why after five games in the elite he crossed the field line to settle forever on the benches. He lives, thinks, speaks, reads for and through the rectangle of grass, his life, his work; but he transcends it with a disruptive social reading for the new patricians with whom he lives, his players, almost all of them with plebeian heraldry, who the money they earn has made them forget as quickly as they have evolved.. She tries to transform from within, alerting us socially, from there, outward. His Uruguay has left Brazil in the sporting gutter, but she has taken advantage of a question from a Brazilian reporter to vehemently attack the nonsense.
Business cannot break the soul and significance of sport. The artificial increase in viewers who devour highlights but do not watch the game is harmful. Football should once again recover its essence, as a symbol of the significance of the people despite the money that surrounds it. Privileging the artificial to grow the business goes against the nature of the game. Money is not a significant episode for Marcelo to continue in football, it is the strong emotions it produces in him, which surrounds them with a vital philosophy that should move us as much as Messi’s plays. He alerts us to what is happening with football, please listen to him. We have time to react, Bielsa challenges us, but also warns us.
