Roberto Fontanarrosa died in 2007 and thanks to a judicial agreement between his heirs, his unpublished work is being published as a book. Planeta was in charge of launching “I want to see you again” and “Manual del fan” on the market. Now it was the turn of “100% Negro”, the third volume of rescues.
From this new publication, we anticipate the story “He who wins is right”, an irony against resultsism and in favor of football as the art that it is. If we delve into old soccer cracks, we could see that the brilliant Rosario is talking about the war between Cesar Luis Menotti y Carlos Salvador Bilardo. The first, a cultivator of good game and of the showthe second, of the hard and pure result, regardless of the ways or tricks to win. Hence, the parallelism with the very Adolf Hitler“winner” in the invasion of Poland that sparked World War II in 1939.
“He who wins is right”, by Roberto Fontanarrosa.
It is known that the best way to win a classic is unfairly. With a goal on the hour, invalidated and after having been rallied throughout the game. But, leaving aside the classics, where fanaticism conspires badly against good taste, being happy to win anyway is like being happy when you go to the cinema to see a movie that is horrible but where, in the end, the boy wins.
I remember that once, a player who was behind me in the Central office, told his companion: “I liked Griguol’s Central, because we didn’t score goals, but they didn’t either.” Apart from the inaccuracy of the assertion (there was a Griguol Central, with Bóveda, Cabral and Kempes, who got tired of scoring goals) the sentence led me to wonder: “What the hell is this guy coming to the pitch for?”
Because the English designed the field with two arches at each end, and these structures are for something. Soccer thrives on goals or, at least (given the petty times in which we have to live), on scoring situations. It happens that we have become a pusillanimous race, where the fear of suffering makes us shy away from emotion. We become flimsy beings who yearn for 90 minutes without shocks of any kind to finally take the flattery of a dot to our house (whether we are locals or visitors). And there are technicians who interpret that feeling. They work to take work away from Favaloro. No shock for the heart, no shock for the coronaries. They take refuge in the intricacies of a regulation that does not stipulate anywhere that it is prohibited to put nine guys inside their own area. To top it off, in one of those, they then hit it with a happy fast break, capitalized on a lucky rebound and ended up taking all three points. “Intelligent proposal”, the press will say. “They know what they are here to do”, the losing fan will cry. Meanwhile, the team that came out on top, that went to look for the result, the one that risked to defend the show and return the ticket money to the people will be “barely will” and “frayed efforts.”
Fontanarrosa and his “Fan’s Manual”
“The only thing that matters is the result”, will say those who took the well of rapture. And, if so, what are the matches played for? If you only care about the result, why doesn’t the AFA draw them? Let the AFA draw them, that’s it. Let a coin be tossed. If it comes up heads and Central wins, I’ll go out with the car to honk in the center. On the other hand, when the team wins by playing badly and one says “we won, but we played badly”, it is not because they are complaining, or because they are an exaggerated aesthetic appetite, but because, logically, it is most likely that, playing like that, the following Sunday we lose.
“People only remember the winners,” say the pseudo-yuppies who abide by the Yankee advice to “stomp your feet and spit away.” And it’s a lie. There is another value that weighs in the market: what remains in the memory of the people. Why, even today, do people remember Eduardo Lausse, if he never became a world champion? Why do we remember Canceco, Pando, Carceo, González and Sciarra, if those “red bugs” did not reach the Olympic lap? Or was Holland from 74 world champion? Or Cameroon, He who wins is right in Italy? Why do they have the privilege of being rescued in any conversation on the subject while it is already difficult for other teams (Argentina, runner-up in 1990, for example) to even remember how they formed?
Luckily, soccer is a business. And, having money involved, the owners of the show know that (for money) a show can be anything but boring. Soccer is, so far, the only show business that allows itself to destroy itself. When everyone expected to appreciate Maradona’s art, his marker (Gentile, for example) had permission to kick him 47 times in the same game. It’s like hiring Mercedes Sosa and admitting that her microphone is cut off, her lights burn out and the stage sinks. But, to the hope of those of us who love soccer, today FIFA seems to be taking steps to save the goose that laid the golden eggs. Three points to the winner, sanctions to the violent, prohibition of permanently giving the ball to the goalkeeper. On the other hand, the model teams, San Pablo, Barcelona, Milan, go out looking at the goal in front, take risks, bet big, jump onto the field with audacity and authority, as the Spanish say. And they win by playing football that people like. Because people know how to distinguish between well-played football and merely beautiful football. Between the serious player and the calesitero player. No one supposes that throwing a pipe, making a hat or having the ball on the instep for fourteen minutes without creating a single goal option in the opposite goal is playing well. If so, all the kids who shorten the tedium of halftime by playing with the ball would reach figures. And they don’t get it.
“Whoever wins is right.” I don’t know who said that phrase. But it could have been said by Hitler after invading Poland.