Make it the best match of your life, mr. rapallini

This Tuesday in Lima, in a stadium with 40,000 people ready for tonsillitis, Peru is playing for the chance to go to the playoffs and then to its second consecutive World Cup. They are three points, but also 20 million dollars on average FIFA and sponsors reward —maybe they are more— to classify. There are barely three stitches that are enough to sew up the enormous wound of our self-esteem, even if it is for a few months and then it reopens. And it’s three points, because the win over Paraguay sends the selection directly to the playoffs, regardless of the calculations on other fields in South America and that brief sum in Peruvian mathematics, will multiply the joy.

The justice of that meeting, will be in the hands of the Argentine referee Fernando Rapallini. Fefo for his friends, was born in La Plata 43 years ago, has been a FIFA since 2014 and has a job that the newspaper La Capital de Mar del Plata defined as “pool builder”. He knows what it’s like to direct spicy matches: he has been in River-Boca, in Racing-Independiente, two scenarios that are like microwave ovens. In 2021, he even whistled at the European Championship, against the surprising North Macedonia, which eliminated Italy from the World Cup. And given his experience, he also already had a controversial episode with the VAR: a red card annulled and a penalty charged in a Flamengo-Olimpia match for the Copa Libertadores.

Googling his biography must be an obsessive exercise until tomorrow, Tuesday the 29th. At 6:30 pm it matters more that Cueva starts the game in a state of grace, that the defense returns solvency and does not run into trouble, that Yotún becomes Yotún again so that Peru recovers, in the most important soccer match of the year, the identity that allows it to overcome its rival with the ball. Without it, the team depends on a miracle to reach the playoffs. With this, it only depends on you.

Make it the best match of your life, mr. rapallini. In his trade, with the regulations and mechanics required by the VAR, thus being invisible. Our recent memory bothers. There is a place reserved for Peruvians on tomorrow’s cover. The goals have to be scored by ours.

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