It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a child’s hairstyle the way that child Andrés Iniesta did. Or maybe we should say how his mother combed his hair, since it’s not entirely clear from what age children start to feel remotely grown up and make really important decisions like what shoes to wear , length of pants or certain haircuts. parts. Youth fashion seems to be going in different directions these days. And while huge talents continue to emerge under the rocks, nothing seems so casual and innocent when kids who wanted to be soccer players split themselves in the middle – or let them. do – and jump on the field in fear of the sky, that is to say. say: crossing themselves.
Andrés Iniesta leaves behind a whole generation that understood football as a competition without goals, the dictatorship of possession, where someone grabbed the ball and started shooting no matter where or how it ended. We asked this football based on the most absolute hub he rebollizo and he encouraged the good ones and removed from the field – or rather from the road, since the fields require a certain budget – those who just wanted to run after the ball because there were few other options. It is not difficult to imagine that seven or eight-year-old Iniesta was feeding the ball under the cover of a smile as his teammates turned around him, seriously thinking it was worth a try: that’s how it played he too when he was already a world star.
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Strangely enough, the boy who seemed to express himself as if there were no goals, was a goalscorer noted by history. First at Stamford Bridge, giving some justice to an equality in which Barça were better than Chelsea, he suffered his share of referee injustices with less publicity and fuss than the English – or the English that was not so – and in the end he won with that great shot of Iniesta. caused unusual scenes across the planet. Then would come the final in South Africa, the result of the World Cup with all the uncertainty of extra time, the scoring of goals, the hand-painted shirt to remember the absent friend, the mad patriotism and the Waka Waka as the new. national anthem.
One day we found out that Iniesta was losing his hair too. Nothing sudden, since it was already clear for some time. But the same thing happens to enthusiastic fans as happens to cows when they see the train going away: they don’t always distinguish, or we don’t, between progress and routine. The era of banned toys was approaching for a generation that often turned its eyes towards the East to ensure that Iniesta continued to play, it didn’t matter whether in Japan or Pakistan, almost as continuity insurance against insurmountable disasters of the century. .
“They have the advantage that when they look at each other, they look directly into each other’s eyes,” said Cruyff in a conversation with Valdano referring to the importance of Iniesta and Xavi in Leo Messi’s game. Because of the size, Flaco made fun, but even more because of the style and conception. A good friend of mine, also thin, but a Real Madrid fan, gave them the perfect nickname for the messiniestas, correct the kind of weak footballer who is banished from the fields by the law of the strongest. And also the one who made us empathize with a new kind of bullying, with that boy with his First Communion hairstyle who understood professional football as if he had been born in Fuentealbilla, Albacete.