algol

Beautiful trip down memory lane. In '82 I was 12 years old, so I have plenty of shared memories. I can only shudder at the support for Brazil. I’ve always hated their showiness; a formidable team, sure, but stuff you'd never see in a video game. Just look at the goals against New Zealand, Scotland, and the USSR. Too bad football is a sport (or perhaps it still is, definitely back then) and not a show. If you don't defend, you lose, no matter how beautiful and flashy your game is. But nowadays it's taken as a given that football must entertain, otherwise it's crap (the rampant Guardiolaism). As if beautiful play were a system. Personally, this perspective disgusts me; in football, and team sports in general, winning is what counts. And you have to do it by any means necessary, even if that means making the opponent play badly if you don’t have Messi or Ronaldo on your team, while highlighting your own strengths. Beauty doesn’t count for shit; I get a thousand times more excited about Uruguay being world champions and about those who give everything to win. This rhetoric about "entertaining" football really gets on my nerves. What’s so spectacular about a 5-3 between City and Tottenham in the Champions League? You need to explain that to me, with two teams completely incapable of managing the result—an abomination. The same tactical stupidity that the Italians punished with endless pleasure. End of the philosophical/sporting drift; otherwise, I’ll become tiresome.

How one can reconcile the mystic (boring) mountain silence with this (virtuous) racket remains a mystery. But that's alright.

Just received. As always, perfectly in focus through your lens.

Give me back the first Pacific Rim.

The Pleistocene gems of Marco Orsi. I'll probably stay away from this one, considering that I'm only tolerant of this genre with PJ and maybe a bit more (Screamin Trees). Useful and good page.

There is poetry

I don't know. I read another biography of his, I'll get the title and author later. I have to admit that what I took from it was a profound sadness, mixed with a vague feeling of claustrophobia and regret. A journey in a state of total and irreversible addiction. Beyond any judgment on the man (I imagine that having an addiction is a prison of the soul), it's not exactly a pleasant sight. Remembered for his deeds, even though he was almost never properly trained. Not to be mythologized for his alcoholism, which added nothing to his greatness; it only devastated him, taking away who knows how many more moments of sublime football beauty.

Good job. Her too.

With the spacing sorted out, it's a whole different matter now.

Maybe it was better in the editorials.