“So the glory of the world”. Tomas de Kempis
I am interested in three sports, nothing more. Soccer, tennis and golf. Between games, press and the nostalgia banquets offered by YouTube, soccer occupies 90 percent of my sports attention. Tennis and golf consume me four times a year each, when the majors are played.
Basketball, handball, baseball, hockey, American football, motorcycling, Formula 1, athletics or everything that is Olympic Games: pass. This does not mean that I am going to fall into the slob of claiming that one sport is better than another. There is simply a limit to the number of things one can spend their time on in one lifetime.
What I would highlight today about football and tennis – except golf – is that we are experiencing a moment of generational change. The old idols wear out and we look for new ones to maintain the illusion. We have had to do it many times before and we will do it again now.
In football, the Messi-Cristiano era that has given us so much fun for most of the 21st century is coming to an end. The same with Nadal and Federer, a rivalry that if it had not existed little would have interested me in tennis. Djokovic is just as good as the other two but, although he has the virtue of being ruder, he generates less magic.
In golf the colossus Tiger Woods has really had no rival. I’ll be following him more than any other player at the British Open which starts on the 14th, I’ll be hoping for Jon Rahm from the Basque Country or Rory McIlroy from Northern Ireland (since the semi-crippled Woods won’t stand a chance I think), but the new breed of talent that golfers like Collin Morikawa or Scottie Scheffler make up suffer from a charisma deficit that leaves me cold.
There is no choice but to follow football despite the fact that I doubt very much that in the years that remain I will see another Messi, not even another Cristiano. Mbappé showed promise and may be the dominant figure in the coming years but by deciding to stay at PSG, for the Qatari millions and pour la belle France, he ended his chances of achieving immortality. Also, by devoting most of his time to (de facto) La Ligue friendlies, he will be far more in the spotlight than perhaps he deserves. In any case, Mbappé would never enter the list of the great greats, that of Messi, Maradona, Pelé and Di Stéfano.
Neither does Håland, the Viking recently signed by Manchester City, who will compete with Mbappé in the second division of historical scorers, a list that includes, among several others, Van Basten, Romário, Puskas and the Pole to whom Barcelona dreams of giving a pair of early retirement years, Robert Lewandowski. Other young talents will appear next season but for now, from what I have heard, we have the Spanish Pedri and the English Foden, who are not bad at all and may one day approach the level of Andrés Iniesta.
Where there is illusion of good is in tennis. Carlos Alcaraz has all the earmarks of being able to become number one in the world for a long time and of reaching, if he doesn’t lose his head, the stratospheric level of Nadal and Federer. There is no doubt that the 19-year-old wonder is the great promise of Spanish sport.
Alcaraz is Nadal’s heir but he is not his clone, neither in how he plays nor in terms of personality. Alcaraz does not wait for his moment; he goes for it all. When Nadal was his age he was a patient, trench player, World War I style; Alcaraz is the blitzkrieg (lightning war) of the Second. And he exhibits a self-confidence that borders on arrogance, not bad in a champion, but very different from Nadal, humility made flesh. After losing at Wimbledon to what could be his great rival in the coming years, the 20-year-old Italian Jannik Sinner, Alcaraz said: “I’m going to be a great player here on grass.” Impossible to imagine Nadal saying something like that.
What Nadal would say is another thing that Alcaraz said: “I always try to be a good person first, then a good athlete.” This feeling is very Spanish. A top-tier American, English, Australian or Russian competitor would never say that. It wouldn’t occur to them. To an Italian maybe yes. In the Mediterranean we know what is important and that is why we live better.
Happy summer.
