Chile, Argentina and when football becomes literature | REVIEW

Anyone who has ever entered a field knows that the ninety minutes of a football game are not comparable to those we invest in other tasks. In that period the laws of time change, the duration -that element auscultated and diagnosed in a brilliant way by Peter Handke- takes on a versatile and capricious look: the passing of things is neutral in the tie, fast after receiving a goal against , very slow when we are winning by an agonizing difference. A whole book can be sheltered in that hour and a half where the individual destiny of the hero or the dignity of an entire country is defined. The history of nations rarely emerges unscathed from a momentous match. The Peruvians -from 6-0 in Argentina 78 to the unforgettable confrontation with New Zealand in Lima- we have numerous proofs of what has been said.

, on September 26, 1973, with the bloody overthrow of Salvador Allende still fresh. The situation was dark: six of the members of the southern representative had relatives persecuted by the brand new dictatorship; They had been threatened with dire consequences if they dared to speak about politics to the foreign press. The trip to the USSR, at that time without the internet or globalization, was equivalent to a trip to Saturn: a strange and distant land that was reached after several stops and implausible inconveniences.

Pickett manages to put together an intricate mosaic with different versions of events through interviews with those who lived this adventure full of uncertainty. The protagonists – subjected to the vagaries of memory – sometimes contradict the memories of others, in others they coincide, sometimes they add one more detail that transforms the tragic into the comic, the anecdote into a symbol. Held in the monumental Lenin Stadium, the match ended with a scoreless draw; the locals, winners of the Olympic bronze and European runners-up, failed to break the Mapuche defense, made up of six men and three sturdy containment shuttlecocks glued to the rear. The return match in Santiago could not be held, as the Soviet authorities prohibited their team from playing in an enclosure “splattered with the blood of the Chilean patriots.” It was a fair classification, but bitter like no other.

The game of the hand of God and the impossible goal that motivated the surrealist narrative of Víctor Hugo Morales, that of the cosmic kite. Burgo builds one feat on another: that of materializing a book in which no detail about that set is left out. As if it were a new Aleph, the chronicler contemplates the entire planet through those ninety minutes and thus travels to the house of the English national team who keeps Maradona’s shirt, traces the past of the cabalistic Carlos Salvador Bilardo in search of the keys of his success, he scrutinizes Diego’s passion and ecstasy in lifting the trophy he achieved through the most decisive participation a player has ever given in a World Cup. The avalanche of data that is offered does not obscure an inspired prose that flows the same to each dribble of the Fluff, disrupting any son of Albion that crosses its path.

The warlike metaphor that football contains takes on a tangible reference in this book: the Falklands War. Although at the time those involved were very politically correct on the issue, the reverberation of the tragedy was inevitable and Maradona acknowledges that he took it as a collective revenge on behalf of the boys who were left under a burial mound in the South Atlantic. This background endows “The game (of the century)” with a look that goes beyond a priceless play.

The token

Alex Pickett. The party of the brave. Five aces, 2015.

Andrés Burgo. The party (of the century). Tusquets, 2016.

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