Soccer is a strong elixir that can transport those who drink it to another dimension. They get out of it. Well, minutes before 3:00 p.m. last Sunday, Argentina, economically and socially prostrate, ingested a massive dose of the potion and exploded with euphoria. By instinct, hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million -or two- of people made a pilgrimage to the Obelisk, that sharp totem that, as a structure erected by the devotees of a cult of mysterious origin, dominates the center of the Federal Capital, to render tribute to the selection, to the country and to themselves.
Everyone wanted to participate, shouting “we are the world champions”, ignoring the daily hardships and the acrimonious conflicts, both frivolous and deep, that had kept them divided. Happiness reigned, but the silently admonishing voices of those who wonder: how long will it last? “Eternal glory” would headline La Nación, a usually sober newspaper; for a while, the writers forgot about “sic transit gloria mundi”, that in this life the golden moments are usually brief and are followed by a sense of anticlimax. Another even more insistent question hung in the air: why? Why can the country succeed in the most popular, and therefore one of the most demanding, sports competitions on the planet, but fail spectacularly in almost everything else?
Here is the reason why members and supporters of the national government are not finding it easy to take advantage of the apotheosis of Lionel Messi and his companions. It is not that most people find it unworthy that politicians try to appropriate parts of a victory to which they did not contribute, since it is normal for them to do so and they are far from being the only ones, but rather that the contrast between their own performance and that of athletes has become so cruelly evident. Everyone knows that, in their own World Cup, the political team would be among those that never had any chance of qualifying for the final tournament.
What is behind this shocking difference that, of course, does not only involve the Kirchnerists? In part, to the way in which the national political “selection” is formed. If it had occurred to Lionel Scaloni to limit himself to choosing those who are “loyal” to him, in addition to friends and family and, of course, those willing to celebrate their own misdeeds and rabidly condemn those perpetrated by rivals, the team thus constituted it would not have gone well at all. It happens that when it comes to matters that are very important to them, such as football, people understand very well what is at stake, but in other areas they have become accustomed to tolerating and even celebrating mediocrity. Despite the fact that not only many professional politicians but also those who support them regret it, it would be convenient to take into account the suitability of those summoned to govern the country or a province, efficiently manage key departments of the public administration so that they are not filled with gnocchi , and accomplish similar tasks.
Faced with football, everyone, including the least gifted, are born meritocrats. They want the manager to favor the best. The mere idea that one would think first of a player’s social origin, his last name, his economic status or his political views would seem absurd to them. To be more specific, very few are scandalized by the fact that someone like Messi earns more in an hour than a common employee in the course of a whole year of intense work. Even so, although it seems natural to them that this is the case, many are passionately opposed to the capitalist logic that makes it possible.
However, in football, as in many other activities, success depends on a happy combination of the individual and the collective. No matter how wonderfully gifted a player may be, they will achieve nothing if they are not backed by an effective team, but no team will be in a position to win competitive championships unless all the members are well-trained athletes who know how to coordinate their own movements with those of their peers. partners and are willing to submit to a consented plan.
The same can be said of national communities. There are many reasons to suppose that, despite the successive exoduses of the last decades, the notorious brain drain that it has experienced, Argentina continues to have enough “human capital” to catch up with the leading countries in the world. , but which until now has completely lacked the ability to take advantage of it. It is, then, a matter of organization, of the failure of the “model” that has been developed. Although it is painfully evident that the one built by generations of populists, some more irresponsible than others, who were formed in a sui generis political culture that most would like to repudiate, has turned out to be a ruthless shredder of personal projects, be they modest or extremely ambitious. , no attempt to dismantle it to replace it with a better one has prospered.
Last Sunday, many victims of that perverse machine were able to get away briefly from the world in which they feel trapped, knowing that they would soon have to return to the depressing place where they were before those four penalty goals interrupted by the goalkeeper’s exploits opened them up. a door through which they could exit. As they knew full well, in order to escape, they would need something more to happen, much more, than what they saw on television on Sunday.
As often happens at times like this, many are trying to learn lessons from the bumpy but ultimately successful journey of La Scaloneta, which, one way or another, was able to stay afloat until it achieved victory. The words and the non-triumphant attitude of the technical director himself helped, who repeatedly alluded to “effort”, the need to prepare, to learn from the mistakes made and never resign to being defeated. He also referred to the help of the people; others would have talked about pressure. In any case, the attitude assumed by Scaloni was pragmatic and detailed; With the emotional support of the soccer players he summoned, he allowed him to overcome all the many difficulties along the way.
Would a similar strategy work just as well in the far from easy political world? The truth is that there is no reason to doubt that, as long as they could convince the twenty million or more who play for the great national team that it would be worth the effort, a series of pragmatic and realistic governments could do of Argentina a prosperous and relatively equitable country. Of course there will always be some who achieve much more than others; Like it or not, the world will always be like this.
Fortunately, neither Scaloni nor his assistants, not to mention the footballers of the national team, adhere to the principles claimed by those who sympathize with the current government and supply it with ideas. Those do believe in the value of individual effort and demand that everyone pitch in for the common goal. Likewise, they are successful because they know very well that ignoring the failures of some would be fatal for the whole, which can sometimes seem very harsh, but which is essential in any collective venture. Does society ask so much of those who describe themselves as leaders? There aren’t many reasons to believe so. If they were not willing to settle for the mediocrity of those chosen to govern the country, the unhealthy practice of offering the citizenry lists of candidates headed by some well-known characters followed by others, handpicked by the bosses, would have been abandoned long ago. names mean nothing.
The fate of any society, be it a company or a country, depends to a large extent on the ability of those in charge to make full use of the available talents. Perhaps one of the basic reasons for the strange collective disaster that Argentina has suffered consists of the refusal of those who have accumulated the most political power to recognize that talent is a very scarce commodity and that it is necessary to look for it and then try to ensure that it flourishes. .
This is an ungrateful reality for many, understood both by the elites of the relatively rich countries to which contingents of young people emigrate who do not find opportunities here, and by the leaders of the Communist Party of China who, for their part, do not hesitate to privilege the most capable, but which in Argentina too many politicians and politicized prefer to repudiate for assuming that, ultimately, their own power depends on the mobilization of the resentment of the less capable. For the current government, you have to level down so that everyone is equally poor and, judging by the results of the tests that have been carried out, equally ignorant. As Alberto Fernández once informed us, “merit” is the least of it. It goes without saying that a society formed in this way will not be able to compete in a world in which, as many anticipate, the status of different nations will be increasingly determined by the educational quality of its inhabitants.
