A World Cup escape from a troubled Mexican reality

The 2006 World Cup in Germany coincided with a turbulent period in my teenage years. It helped that my group of friends had a great place to watch the games: one of them lived in an with an apartment with a great view of Mexico City, stocked with food and alcohol and a giant television. We were teenagers, but our age “allowed” us to drink beers and get drunk using the excuse of football.

It was the perfect stage to forget about everything that happened outside of our lair. My parents were getting divorced and I didn’t want to talk about it. The national elections elicited pathetic political opinions from our group of friends, based only in our teenage aspirations. I’m glad nobody heard us arguing. But, as for the World Cup—we knew how to talk about that.

On paper, Mexico had a decent chance, having been grouped with Portugal, Iran and Angola. We started by beating Iran, but then we had an insipid goalless draw against Angola and we finished with a loss to eventual group winners, Portugal. Nonetheless, we somehow got to the Round of 16 where we had to face Argentina. That would be perfect: a quick painless death, right? But, no! Mexico should trademark the common Latin American saying: "Jugamos como nunca, perdimos como siempre.” That literally translates to “we played as we never would, we lost as we always do.”

Mexico scored first (through the reliable Rafa Marquez). Argentina tied the game (Hernan Crespo of course), but we had them against the ropes for most of the game. The hopes I had buried suddenly began to bubble up again, until that damned and extraordinary goal that Maxi Rodríguez scored in extra time.

My hopes vanished as quickly as they had come and without them my friends and I were catapulted back to reality: teenagers pretending to be politicians, a country that was wobbling (and now has crumbled) and an unpleasant family situation that the game had helped me to forget for a couple of weeks.

Eight years on, things could hardly be better in my life. The bad thing is that my hopes about the Mexican national team are coming back.

*As told to Africasacountry.