In the summer of 2018, the soccer World Cup was held in Russia and I had the day off and we had gone to eat at a friend's house.
We smacked and laughed and children and adolescents ran around us. The boys would shoot in the yard, or play ping-pong in the basement, and sometimes they would show up and attack a kibble and an orange Fanta and walk away again.
From time to time, I would take a look at my cell phone to see how Germany-Sweden was going, but I preferred not to think about it too much because I had the day off.
And if I book, it's free.
Even so, professional deformation...
At one point in the evening I took another look at the screen, maybe the game was over. And when it did, I said:
It seems that Germany has won...
I hadn't finished my sentence when, from somewhere, Hugo appeared, a ten-year-old boy whose innocence left me in my underwear. Planting a screen in my face (perhaps a cell phone, perhaps a tablet), he called out:
–Germany won with a great goal from Toni Kroos! Look, man, do you want to see it?
And there it was.
Almost live: the goal.
Hugo was showing me the wonderful free kick: there was the execution, with high quality images.
"Wow," I said.
I really didn't know what to say.
And while I said “wow” and savored Kroos's great goal, I asked myself: “When has little Hugo been following the Germany-Sweden game? Hadn't that kid been shooting in the yard for a while and playing ping-pong in the basement? And how was he able to find the goal so quickly? And how come I haven't been able to find it myself? Am I not supposed to be a professional journalist, am I not supposed to be ahead of the rest?
I spent a few minutes thinking about the matter, and while I was meditating on it, I got another croquette and another beer, and after a while I put the matter aside for another time, because someone at the table told a joke, I don't remember if it was good or bad , and my mind changed the channel.
PS: In fact, I haven't thought much about that silent humiliation until this weekend, when Piqué's Kings League and his streamer friends gathered 92,000 people at the Camp Nou. Piled all there, congregants spent time watching modest football-7s while listening to Twitch, dancing to the dee-jays, devouring popcorn and playing Stumble Guys on mobile. Everything, for twenty euros. And that's how I understood it: I can never be like Piqué.
