Few aspects of our passionate and crazy relationship with football reveal that we are endowed with empathy and compassion. Maybe none do it like the injuries of the footballers. Ansu Fati‘s tears on the night of the ever-sinister San Mamés hurt far more than defeat. And the issue is worth analyzing.
In Europe, it is estimated that one in five Europeans suffers from chronic pain. Pain medications move huge amounts of money (in 2015 it amounted to 31 billion euros a year, and was growing at rates close to 10%). Healthcare is the main source of public spending. And you know that in our day to day life we spend a lot of time on evil and pain. There is no meeting of friends that does not contain the tragicomic space known as my rheumatism hurts more than yours. We talk about our pains, to ward them off, but also as revenge. There are chronic pains that have ended up boring us, but there are some that, alas, leave us unable to do sports and will deserve an extra ration of complaints and grievances.
And, of course, we make real pilgrimages to our physiotherapists, traumatologists, osteopaths, acupuncturists, reflexologists and yes, also to skinny-looking medieval healers who already operate uncomplicatedly in the realm of superstition. They are our spiritual guides on the hard path of pain, and their are the amulets and remedies that accompany us: ibuprofen, paracetamols, Reflex, tiger’s eye, essential oils, rabbit legs, homeopathy balls.
And despite the shadow that accompanies us and our backpack of diagnoses ranging from tendinitis to osteoarthritis, through fractures and sprains and the wide range of possibilities offered by traumatology and truly serious diseases, which makes us to go to bed with a shrunken heart is for poor Ansu, with that boy’s face, to go away crying, broken.
It makes sense that the return of footballers to the grass after their medical crossroads is always a magical moment. The first goal after going through the infirmary is a cry of liberation that somehow heals us from all our ills, a collective redemption. This year Ansu has already completed this cycle of tears on three occasions (Levante, Dynamo Kiev and Madrid) and this breaks our hearts. We really would love to hear from you. It doesn’t come from here. But he can make us shout against the blows that life gives us, he can mark for us, the endless legion of the lame, sick and defective of the world.
