Champions of the World

Looking back at the World Cup Final, the suffering, and the dream I can't wake up from.

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.

—GK Chesterton

Note: This story was updated to its book version in October 2023.

The pits of my eyes were dry by the time Kylian Mbappé stepped up to take the first kick of the penalty shootout for France. It was 12:49 p.m. The rivers I had cried for 120 minutes had dried like creek beds on my cheeks, and my body shook uncontrollably as if I were freezing to death inside an Alaskan school bus. Except I was in the basement, alone, my phone set to Do Not Disturb. The only light emanated from a small lamp in the corner furthest from the television. I was watching the World Cup final—the most important event in the world—inside a cave.

“If you start feeling your arm tingle, call 911,” Haley texted when I told her that I thought I was going to collapse. She had grown used to this. Since September, she had seen me cry at least 16,327 times. In the middle of the day, she would walk into the kitchen, where I’d be weeping in the corner. Instinctively, she would hug me from behind, seeping her warmth and hopefulness into my skin. But it wouldn’t last long. Hours later, I’d wake up gasping for air, my body covered in sweat. “Darling, the children are asleep. Your parents are alive. We’ll be in the new house before Christmas. Everything is OK,” she’d reassure me, caressing my cheek. And I’d moan, “It’s not that. It’s Messi. I’m never going to see him play for Argentina again.”

The morning of the World Cup final, Haley left the house early with the children. After 29 days of watching me suffer through Argentina’s unexpected loss to Saudi Arabia, excruciating wins against Mexico and Australia, and an agonizing penalty kick shootout against the Netherlands, she understood the stakes and decided it would be better for them to watch at her mom’s house. For nearly a month, I had skipped the gym, canceled plans with people I care about, left home early and worked late, had little fun, and endured inextinguishable anguish for 90 minutes at a time. After Argentina’s opening loss, which Haley and I watched together on the couch as the children slept, we made a pact. For the do-or-die matchup against Mexico, I would need to be alone. She’d leave the house for 90 minutes. And if it proved a winning formula, we would not take the risk of breaking the practice until after the final whistle on December 18. I could not be the reason for Argentina’s elimination.

It may not make sense to you unless you’re Argentinian, have watched soccer games in Latin America, or bear the curse of having a superstitious sports fanatic in your life. Every Argentinian understands that when your team wins, you must watch the next game in exactly the same way. You must wear exactly the same thing, sit or stand in exactly the same spot, drink exactly the same drink, scratch exactly the same spot on your inner left thigh at the 53-minute mark—or risk unleashing God’s fury. This is cábala, a tradition that stretches back to the first time a person on Argentine soil kicked a soccer ball that would’ve struck the post if not for a lucky pair of unwashed underwear.

The week of the semifinal against Croatia, Haley and I had taken a tremendous risk: we traveled with the children to New Jersey to visit my parents and grandparents. I had planned to watch the game alone in my parents’ apartment, wearing my Argentina jersey and scarf, a flag draped over my legs—just as I had watched the wins against Mexico, Poland, Australia, and the Netherlands. But then I thought of Nono watching alone downstairs. Before moving away in 2011, I had spent a decade watching CONMEBOL qualifiers, World Cups, Champions Leagues and La Liga, Serie A, and Premier League matches with Nono at his kitchen table. On Saturdays, we would drink fernet and sweet vermouth, eat plates of mortadella, capicola, and other cold cuts we’d picked up from the Egyptian-owned Italian deli four blocks away, and watch matches from 7:30 a.m. till 6 p.m. like it was our full-time job. My friends didn’t understand it. My girlfriends didn’t understand it. But this was our tradition.

A month or two before every World Cup since 2010, Nono would say, “I don’t know that this one’s going to be any good—if I even live to see it.” He turned 85 two weeks before the final in Qatar, so this World Cup reasonably could’ve been his last. Instinct told me that he’d want his eldest grandson beside him for the semifinal, despite the risk of breaking cábala. Haley, who refused to do as the other women in my family and clutch rosary beads or light candles to the saints and sit in darkness away from the TV, turned the game on in my parents’ apartment upstairs. The kids napped, ignorant of their father’s anguish. And after 90 heart-pounding minutes, Nono and I exhaled. Argentina won 3–0.

The night before the final, I fell asleep to a YouTube video of Messi playing soccer as a 12-year-old in Rosario. Hours later, I woke up sweating and nervous, with a strange feeling in my stomach. Haley and the children had smiles on their faces, the day ahead as bright as any other. I started to feel that my insistence on the cábala that would separate us for the next two hours was ridiculous. Maybe I could go and watch the final with Haley and her family, I thought. That way, if we won, we could all celebrate together.

That’s what a proper husband and father would do. They wouldn’t abandon their family to walk into the lion’s den alone. I was still thinking I should go with them as I wrapped an Argentinean flag around my shoulders and watched Haley dress the kids in their matching blue-and-white jerseys and tracksuits. But my wife, as she usually does, knew better. She encouraged me to stay strong. I watched them leave through the basement door a few minutes before 10 a.m. The moment to suffer had come.