• Spain: a defense of former champions
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I was about to watch the game of Spain and, while preparing a Campari to keep me company just in case the Scandinavian cold slipped through the TV screen, they gave the lineups. I heard a strange word, Albiol , which made me think that the channel, in the previous meeting, had decided to temper the souls of nostalgic viewers, not with a Campari, but with a beautiful reminder of 2010. But no, Albiol played. Albiol himself, not an emerging nephew or something.

Obviously, not a single reproach can be made to Albiol. On the contrary, it is a magnificent power station that also played a leading role in the Spanish generation that won so many things and will never be able to go through a metal detector without a whistle: the World Cup will always be housed inside like a bullet. But Albiol is 34 years old and, if I am not mistaken, at some point he closed his cycle in the National Team after having had the fortune of living the triplet years.

He is not the only veteran of 2010 who survives on the team. It is admirable to see Navas sticking still galloped by the band that look like those of a meritorious who still has everything to do. But Albiol is something else. Remember an old licensed warrior who is called again to prolong the service because no one has been able to replace his hierarchy naturally.

Evocatus is the term by which the Romans referred to the centurion that he renewed after concluding his service because he was asked by the Legion commander, who did not want to do without him. The evocati wore in the armor tremendous circular decorations called faleras that were impossible to see in a bisoño. Albiol is an evocatus . They have gone looking for him again like Jim Jeffries on his farm when a delegation headed by Jack London made him the "great white hope" against Jack Johnson .

Once consummated postcoital disasters such as the World Cup in Brazil - and the one in Russia -, it would be said that the National Team is now living in a sad psychological process according to which the more it confirms its current mediation, the more it wants to summon an evocatus 2010. Despite the fact that the classification for the Euro is on track, small disappointments such as Saturday's in Norway, added to the fights suffered in all the final phases after the final in Kiev, have poured a pessimistic resignation.

In the best of cases, it seems that Spain can once again be what it was before an extraordinary generation hooked unexpected titles for four years: a correct, neat team, which loosely saves the previous phases but then does not move from quarters , therefore insufficient to be considered part of the aristocracy, and in any case inferior in performance to the clubs of its parent competition, the League. Wow, what Spain always was, is not to make us dramatic either, this would be louder in historical terms if it happened to Brazil.

Albiol is significant: proven that in his position there is no generational change at the height of that defense that did not fit a single goal of eighths forward during the World Cup in South Africa , he is brought back and we all pretend to believe he has 10 years less. If the same is done, as the new owner of each position fails, the National Team could end up shooting a sports version of the Space Cowboys , whose argument would be that the coach travels in a car trying to find and reunite To the old champions. One is already fat, another is found fighting in a bar, Puyol has to be taken out of a yoga class and directs, while taking it, one last look at his girlfriend, who is left with the posture half done. Anyway, this is dangerous, it always is when a generational succession fails: in Argentina they continue to believe that one day a car will stop and Maradona will come down with the age and weight of 86.

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  • 2020 Euro Cup
  • football
  • Spain National Soccer Team
  • Sergio Ramos
  • sports

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