Only one team wins a World Cup

 

This may be my last post about this world cup. Maybe not, but what else is there to talk about after this?

The final?

Okay, let's talk about the final right now.

For all my machinations about manipulating the future with my pessimism (which actually worked for once!), we have come to the end of the line. There are no more results to manipulate. Yes, there is another game, but, even understanding myself now as controlling fate, I don't know what to do with it. My magic power has become moot.

Going into this particularly thrilling and enormous World Cup of 48 teams, there were two teams that I loved. Two teams that I desperately wanted to do well. I was happy for some other teams to succeed to a point, and also a few teams I disliked greatly for various reasons that I wished failure upon, but there were only two teams in my heart, all pain and glory and desperate hopes.

There probably should only be one team, but when a person follows a sport with a great and avid interest for many years, and the sport is as sprawling as soccer, things can spread out a little. I have managed to keep to just one team in what is known as club soccer. I like to see other teams do well, but I only live and die on Barcelona. I am crushed when they lose, elated when they win. I love their history, though there is a lot of pain in it, their style of play, nearly all of their players, and, of course, their greatest player of all time, Messi.

But Messi has been gone for years now, and though the spectacle of his time in Miami is great fun, he has been, for maybe five years now, primarily Argentina's Messi. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, their brilliant young team is the backbone of the Spanish national team, with Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsi, Pedri, and Dani Olmo shining particularly bright in this World Cup, but with many other important Barcelona players in the team contributing at various levels. Indeed, Spain feels almost like an extension of my own Barcelona club team.

Argentina, Spain.

Even if you are barely paying attention to this world cup, those teams may be faintly familiar sounding to you about now. They are playing in the final Sunday.

Against each other.

Whispering behind my pessimistic plans and my conviction that all must be hopeless before France, was one insane, almost impossible seeming dream:

Spain vs Argentina.

What if it was Spain vs Argentina? 

Trust me. I didn't think about it. It felt like the faintest light could kill it. But there wasn't a single moment where I could fully keep it quiet.

But I guess I kept it dark enough, because here it is.

And now that I have it, Spain vs Argentina, I, who usually have some kind of an answer to everything, don't have an answer. And so I ask you.

I ask you!

I ask you:

Like the dog who chases cars, I have caught one.

What on earth do I do with this?