The final that never ends

On Friday it was pouring rain and I had the strange idea of ​​jumping into a puddle as I ran to the car.

My audacity ended with a sprained ankle and a broken mobile screen.

Since then, my mind has not stopped imagining scenarios in which, changing a minute detail, the phone would remain unharmed: if I carried an umbrella, if I did not rush so much in bed, if I assumed my limitations ... If this happens because of a pileup I don't care, calculate the number of times I have rewritten the 2014 Lisbon Champions final in my head.

There are countless parallel realities, practically the same as ours, in which Atleti is champion.

heads five centimeters more to the right,

does not get caught in the blocks,

takes the foul prior to the draw short in order to lose time and not return the ball to Madrid,

does not try to win a European Cup with a certain Sosa in the field, Atleti ties the League a day before and avoids the injuries of

and

on the last day, the mare's placenta is magical,

does not come up to congratulate me (and gafarme) in the 91st minute, the idiot Iñako does not put the end to a triumphant chronicle ahead of time, Atleti is not Atleti or Madrid, Madrid ... I could go on like this for two days .

Or ten.

Self-help phonies keep telling us that we can't gloat over the past because the future is the only thing that counts.

They are the same people who repeated in March that we were going to get better out of all this, so let's quarantine their omens and their checking accounts.

Unless you are an astronaut, rock star or Madrid pandemic, the chances of experiencing great emotions after a certain age are slim.

And no, an afterwork on the trendy terrace or running 10 kilometers on a Sunday morning do not count.

That's where sports appear, a portable emotion generator.

Soccer is not the opium of the people, as it does not numb, but it can be their LSD, because it triggers the imagination and makes us dream of the impossible, of changing the past and haggling over logic in the future.

30 years will pass and

will continue to see every night, when he closes his eyes, how the penalty hits the post and goes inside.

For a few seconds, in 2046, he will be European champion.

On Saturday night, a kid named

ran over

at Roland Garros.

He did not dream it: he did.

This Monday, after being beaten, he will still think that if that setback in the third game of the first set ever made it past the net, he would now be a hero.

, in the shower, often raises his arms celebrating his victory in a Tour in which

is only a cyclist and not a superman.

There he is: with the yellow jersey and a head full of shampoo.

Even if you are a Madridista, you know perfectly the way for your team to display half a dozen more trophies.

He knows it because in his head he wins them several times a week.

That is the magic.

My mobile will still be broken tomorrow, but tonight my team will have raised a Champions League.

Or two.

And if in the future it reaches another real final, I will already know what I have to do, because I have rehearsed every possible scenario as a CIA operative preparing a vital mission: I will not write a line during the match and if Jabois approaches me, I will have to kill him.

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