This is a compliment to the excellent work Mr Santiago Solari, ex footballer who has now decided (thank you God!) to post a periodic blog at one of Spain's most important newspapers: El Pais.
I feels his last posting regarding Lionel Messi, Argentine football prodigy, has snatched something from the gods, something average humans are no longer exposed to but very, very seldom unless they run into Plato's works or other great Dialogues written long ago in the human imaginary...
Here is my humble attempt to translate Mr Solari's outstanding blog post with the only intention for the people of the English reading world not be 'forbidden' from such a masterpiece. From the language of Miguel Cervantes to the tongue of Shakespeare...
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Original posted by Santiago Solari, Jan. 16, 2012
Last week after the Golden Boot Award was presented, I decided to peruse different online news sites when, inadvertently, I found a football fan's blog: hundreds of comments followed one another without actually forming a dialogue. One of them, which talked about the lack of available adjectives, showed this web-link:
https://mimesis/24.6.87/tempus.est.quaedam.pars.aeterniatem/#!/. After opening the link and after a few images, I found the following posting, here is exactly what I found.
- Don't you believe that football has become more predictable, more structured? I'm afraid that in the future, it will disappoint fans's expectation, people will leave the so called 'beautiful game' due to tediousness.
- I understand your uneasiness, there is only one thing more disappointing than boredom: the anticipation to boredom.
- It could that the culprits are the coaches... They are always speculating. They have perfected the method of repealing attacks in the field to the point that some day the results will be known before the games even start.
- Of course! The experts of mechanization. I know some of them, they are set on avoiding what's inevitable. They repeat, for they believe that repetition sets them free, that such is the way to escape the fate of chance. They ignore that the main reason for this game to exist was to symbolically introduce arbitrariness. This way fans would feel passion, laughter and cry, have hopes and disappointments, all the range of human emotions and in turn, use it as a mirror.
- But if coaches keep progressing at this pace, if they keep repeating the same concepts and perfect the game's mechanisms over and over, they will some day discover the absolute value of all the variables of of it, order shall rule!. We would be left without a parable, we would have to come up with a new one.
- That will never happen. There will always be underdog victories, defeats by the strongest teams and unfair ties at the end of the game. There will always be impossible scores, magic and undeserved, others, fair and valid, will be disallowed. Remember the mistake of a side ref in the Korean World Cup can start a hurricane in Spain!
- Yes... but... in the meantime, coaches walk around convinced in their crusade against the undetermined, dead on putting an order to uncertainty. If they get away with it, some will dare to compare the precise system's organization in the game to the perfect movement of celestial bodies. They could ask: "If a coach is capable of knowing all the natural laws that govern the 4-4-2 system, they'd be able to prevent all unknowns... How would you then affirm that a divine intelligence governs the order of the universe?" Its existence would be superfluous.
- You maybe right, but not on everything you say, maybe we need change so employees don't start to get bored... Maybe the introduction of a variable that would break schemes could help. An element of distortion that would turn the best strategists in chess players without a queen, a piece that will represent the unattainable, the error in sum of the rebel and, at the same time, the hammer in the head of the prudent. In a nutshell, something that will again humanize them...
- A football player!
- Another one? What happened with the last one you requested? I remember giving him grace and flexibility so he could be unique... and then of course, that dribbling...
- I know, you were inspired when you gave him all that but he just publicly acknowledge your help, the hands of God, he said. Besides, dribbling and flexibility will not be enough... Twenty years from now we will need something different. Football is changing, it is becoming a lot more physical, it is moving a lot faster.
- More physical and faster you said? Let me get creative... Let's see, every time this player touches the ball, time will slow down its flow. The universe will be a bit slower, except of course for him, he will move within time as if he possessed elastic properties. His seconds will be longer than the rest of the players or, better yet, he will have more time within the same shared second other mortals have access to. We are going to have a blast! Get it?
- Well, I think I do more or less.. and the name? what is his name going to be?
- I don't know, you take care of it. He must be born in Argentina though, this way it won't be suspicious.
- A messiah from Argentina, ok, I will figure something out. I will take care of it immediately.
