To­day is the first day of the world cup. While I ful­ly ex­pect the verbe and savoir faire of Paulo Wan­chope to whip those ger­man an­i­ma­tron­ic fig­ures in­to sub­mis­sion [1] I start­ed think­ing...

The first cup I re­mem­ber is Ar­genti­na 1978. Which, of course, we won. Thanks maybe to a shady grain ship­ment to Pe­ru, maybe be­cause Cruyff re­fused to come to the coun­try, maybe be­cause we had the world's strong­est guy play­ing [2], maybe be­cause the host na­tion had won like 60% of the time so far, but we did win.

I saw Ar­genti­na-Hun­gary in a movie the­ater with the screen dec­o­rat­ed as a huge TV one day af­ter it was played. Since we lived un­der a bloody dic­ta­tor­ship, ev­ery­one had to standup while we saw the taped an­them-sing­ing, and there was a sort of des­per­ate manda­to­ry pa­tri­o­tism. But any­way, I was 7, it was fun.

Then came Spain 82. I was in school dur­ing most match­es, so I did­n't ac­tu­al­ly see al­most any of them. We had a rather nice team, with Maradona and Ra­mon Di­az, but we met Brazil, which had a mar­velous team. Then the fi­nal was the av­er­age ver­sus the de­press­ing, and the de­press­ing won. Italy won with goals by an ac­tu­al, proven game-­fix­er. And some­how noone re­mem­bers that.

Mex­i­co 86. The first cup where I saw ev­ery damn match. And of course, one of the most mem­o­rable cups ev­er, since, again, we won. And we had the best play­er in the cup by some mar­gin.

Of course, not ev­ery­thing could be flaw­less, and a deeply medi­ocre eng­lish team feels that they would have won ex­cept for the "Hand of God" goal. Well, here's the thing. If the eng­lish had won, it would have been in­jus­tice of such a mind-bend­ing size, ar­maged­don would have hap­pened right there, 21 years too ear­ly.

Not to men­tion that the bit­ter dudes sim­ply can't en­joy be­ing beat­en by the sec­ond goal [3].

Sure, we had to play on­ly Eng­land, Bel­gium and Box­car Willy [4] but then again, we have been on the "Group of Death" for 8 years in a row.

When you play in a park or school­ground, if there is a play­er that's in­cred­i­bly good (or ev­ery­one else is in­cred­i­bly bad) we say "with that gay, it's steal­ing". Well, in 86, with that guy, it was freak­ing armed rob­bery.

Italy 90. I have high blood pres­sure. I blame Italy 90. We start­ed by be­ing the first cham­pi­on ev­er to lose the open­ing match, against Cameroon, be­cause we did­n't play Canig­gia un­til minute 70. In the fol­low­ing ten min­utes, two Cameroon [5] play­ers got red­card­ed. If he had played from the start, we would have won by de­fault be­cause Cameroon would have end­ed with 5 play­ers on the field.

Maradona had his left an­kle the size of a grape­fruit, and the col­or of Mer­lot. He could bare­ly walk.

Our goalie was in­jured in the most grue­some ac­ci­dent I ev­er saw in a foot­ball field. On the slow mo­tion re­ply you can see his leg turn in­to a Z in a very wrong way.

Then we played Rus­sia where Maradona com­mit­ted a clear penal­ty and was­n't called [6]

We seemed to ad­vance in ev­ery round by penalties, and were pret­ty much un­able to score at al­l.

In the match against Brazil, we were so over­matched it was kin­da fun­ny. And then we had two chances. One went in, the oth­er hit the cross­bar. Brazil had about 400 shots on goal, and we had the luck­i­est guy on earth on goal, so...

We played Italy. We had one chance to score. It went in. They tied.

We won on penalties, thanks to the most in­com­pe­tent penal­ty kick­er I ev­er saw [7]. Ser­e­na, wher­ev­er you are, if you ev­er need a drink, I'll buy you one, round-­foot­ed-­won­der!

The fi­nal­s. We were with­out the on­ly guy that could score in the team. With­out our best de­fend­er. Our best play­er was so ban­daged he could­n't use shin­guard­s. Ev­ery­one was way too old. Batista was play­ing like Boris Karlof­f's Franken­stein. We had ran out of play­er­s, out of ideas, out of time.

And we lost. Be­cause of a penal­ty. Which was not a penal­ty (see the re­plays, re­al­ly).

There have on­ly been two play­ers eject­ed on a cup fi­nal ev­er. Guess who they were?

But you know what? The guys played like god damn li­on­s. If you are great, then you are sup­posed to win. We were not great. We were not even av­er­age. That team was a lot of se­nior cit­i­zen­s, one fast guy, a crip­pled won­der and duct tape. And they got to the fi­nal­s. It was as if a smart, poor fat guy with ac­ne and bad breath picks up Nicole Kid­man, but does­n't get to have sex with her. He is still to be ad­mired.

Then came the re­al heart­break. USA 94. That cup nev­er hap­pened. I refuse to think about it.

France 98... so so. We got to quar­ter fi­nal­s, which was about right. We could have gone fur­ther, but Or­te­ga is the dumb­est play­er in the uni­verse, and he de­cid­ed to head­butt a dutch in front of the ref­er­ee.

Japan-Ko­rea 2002. We were favourites. We were the best thing since sliced bread. Our coach was a mad ge­nius. A tor­tured soul. We had the last chance to play one of the most im­pla­ca­ble scor­ers of all time. We had a daz­zling mid­field. A sol­id de­fense. We had beat­en Brazil in Mara­cana a lit­tle ear­li­er. We were kick­ass.

We had a hard group. It was tight. We lost a close match to Eng­land. We had to play Swe­den and we had to win. But we did­n't.

I was liv­ing in Buenos Aires and did­n't have a TV, so I had to go to bars to see the match­es. Ar­genti­na-Swe­den was played at some un­god­ly hour, like 3AM, and I went down­town to see it.

Of course, we were one goal short. And we were out of the cup. I had nev­er seen Ar­genti­na fail to ex­it the group stage. And I was at 5AM in the street, in mid-win­ter, feel­ing re­al­ly, re­al­ly, re­al­ly bad. Which means that of the last three cup­s, two have been hor­ri­ble, one half-de­cen­t.

Since Maradona re­tired, that's our har­vest. This time... this time we had a de­cent team, coached by a nice guy. We have a proabable su­per­star, but he's too young and a lit­tle in­jured. We have a ter­ri­ble goalie, an ag­ing de­fense, a lot of above av­er­age for­ward­s... I say semis, or quar­ter­s. If we get any fur­ther, it will be in the Italy way, not the Mex­i­co way.

But dammit, I will be watch­ing.