I don't want to hate so much in the world cup. But I can't help it. I get as invested negatively (Netherlands, Germany, Morocco, Ronaldo) as I do get invested positively (Spain, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cote D Ivoire until they broke my heart) and I barely even know why it happens most of the time. Seeing Germany's come from behind victory against Cote d Ivoire was miserable but also, due to my dark pessimism, it felt horrifically inevitable. And that's the thing I'm trying to shake off here in the second round; a miserable fatalism.
The things I liked happening, the ones that everyone treats as inevitable and permanent will turn on their heads. I've seen it all happen before. And the things I didn't like are indications of inevitability and the path forward, which I've also seen happen. So Messi, hailed as he is with three goals in the first game, just means, in my Eeyorish heart, that we will see nothing more from him and little more from Argentina now, whereas Mbappe's goals indicate an unstoppable nature and another unstoppable French World Cup.
But I can no more predict a dark future than a bright one. And something good or bad happening is only a Schrodinger's Cat.
It wasn't there all along. I must reembrace this:
Each soccer match is invented at its inception.
And so now I turn to Spain's second match. Will it be the lucid ineffectiveness of round one, or pure Spanish magic? Both are entirely true and whole, until I open the box...
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