Damn! The first revenge is yellow

The addiction to rhetoric that we have suffered debating Qatar has frankly been soporific.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
20 November 2022 Sunday 16:30
13 Reads
Damn! The first revenge is yellow

The addiction to rhetoric that we have suffered debating Qatar has frankly been soporific. We have plagued staff with tweeting effervescence and redundant gibberish while perhaps naively forgetting that all our roads, gasoline included, lead to Doha.

The World Cup has finally begun and the cold sweat is over, the soccer fans agreeing on an agreement that, when the ball rolls, will wake us up from the nightmare of the last few days. Soccer solves because the usual is fashionable. The time has come to meet, despite a Qatar-Ecuador match, which lacks the minimum glamor that should be required of an opening match of a World Cup.

It was José Luis Sampedro who said that we have the obligation to live life, to be the best we can in the company of our own, because alone we are very little. And so it is. Immigrants adapt as they want and as far as they can. In Barcelona there are some 7,000 Ecuadorians who meet on the Facebook wall, very similar to the lamentations when you see your classmate deteriorated and skinned. On Facebook I found an ad: "Enjoy Ecuador's matches in this Qatar 2022 World Cup, along with a delicious fry and a refreshing beer, free tickets."

The place is on Avenida Madrid in Barcelona, ​​near the Gran Via de Carlos III. He thought it would be a restaurant. And no. It is an entrance of a place that tries to give a dose of splendor with a boy from Albania with a headset and a microphone who respectfully asks me where I am going. Exposed my credentials he lets me access. At the end of a corridor noise is heard. A dark door leads to a large room where I count a hundred people, dressed in bright yellow, waiting for the game to start. All Ecuadorians, the majority from Guayaquil and Machala. “Those from Quito never leave Ecuador,” Jon Argüello, the pleasant director of the Oasis Cultural Association, which together with Outoff promotes cultural movements from all communities, basically Latino, tells me.

Ecuador scores 0-1 with a penalty and this group of people, in front of a huge 5 meter by 3 meter television, shouts remembering the places they were. They hug, they kiss, they wave the flags and some videotape the TV goal breaking the fourth wall by pretending to be Jeff Daniels in The Purple Rose of Cairo when he crosses the screen.

And the second comes, a great Ecuadorian goal. Jumps and screams multiply. “I am grateful to have been born humble before being rich by royal decree” –says an excited girl with the 0-2–. “We are going to be the revelation of the World Cup”, bets a man who confesses that he is a worker, like the majority of Ecuadorians who live in Barcelona. It is well known that the greater the economic crisis, the greater the need society feels to escape. There is happiness in the room while in the Doha stands the Ecuadorian public sings “we want beer”. The irony against the Qatari establishment is applauded here while watching the match with Heineken. Next Friday against the Netherlands this room will be filled with joy again.

The management of revenge against the designation of Qatar began yesterday because football has reasons that money does not understand.

-Shit! a guy yells, beer in hand, raising his face and fists.

–Fuck? -I ask.

And Argüello, celebrating the 0-2, translates:

–Guests of the bond.