“This is what it’s like to fall in love with the U from a distance and irrationally”: the cup triumph of the creams against LDU seen from Spain by Renato Cisneros

I get up on my tiptoes, sit at the computer in the living room, put on my headphones and look for that website that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Today, hallelujah, it works. Not a soul passes by on the street. My window is the only one lit in the entire building. When Tunche Rivera scores 1-0 I stand up and suppress the scream that he would make if it were daylight. A minute later I silently curse the referee’s decision to disallow the goal. By far you suffer twice as much. From afar and at dawn, triple.

The LDU goal fills me with anger, it makes me think that it was a bad idea to get up at these inappropriate hours. I immediately understood that no, we fans have to be willing to do anything: to lose, win or draw, regardless of the weather or time zone. Something tells me that we will tie it, in fact, something tells me that we will turn it around in the second half and the score will end 2-1. It’s a matter of having faith, or just having memory. The fan usually takes refuge in emblematic memories. I remember right now the 2-1 against Racing, in Lima, in 1989, with goals from Fidel Suárez and Leoncio Cervera. Or the 2-1 with Colombia’s DIM, in ’94, with two scores from Nunes, the second after six headers in the area. Or the 2-1 with Peñarol, in ’96, in the Centenario, where the triumphant goal was born from a run by Alex Rossi and ended in a calmly placed shot by Mágico Gonzales.

I haven’t finished reviewing those images from the past when Tunche scores 1-1 and Monumental explodes into a dull roar that I would like to be part of. My Peruvian friends in Spain don’t understand why I stay up all night to see the U; Today they proclaim themselves fans of Barça, Atlético, or Madrid. I can not. I distrust migration in that area. I love the U irrationally; a love that is completely justified right now, when I see Rivera surprise everyone by scoring the final goal. They rightly call him the Tunche, I think, just like that creature of the jungle that hides vigilantly and that acts lethally in the face of its adversaries. Dorregaray is sitting well and Valera should be careful, because the starter, at least today, looks like number 11, a boy in a state of grace who, if he kicks a stone tomorrow, will transform it into a flower.

The game ends almost at six. I jump for joy in the room as if I were in the center of the Trench. My wife gets up, persuaded by the noise, she sees the spectacle of my celebration, snorts in disgust as if to say “you’ll never change,” and goes back to sleep. I am about to explain to him what has happened on the other side of the ocean, but I know it will be in vain. Someday she will understand. Some day.