For Captain David there was no doubt: he existed. After navigating the Congo for half his life, he assumed that the depths of the river hid a wonderful and unknown city where fantastic creatures and some lucky men lived. To get to it, you had to make a pact with the devil. Worse: with the Mami Wata.
For centuries, the Mami Wata have instilled fear throughout Africa and part of the Americas, where the myth arrived with African slaves sent to the New World. Legend defines them as beautiful women with the air of a mermaid, with the upper half of the body shaped like a young woman and the lower half like a fish or a snake. On the darkest nights, these magical creatures stealthily swim to the surface to drag the unwary who doubt their existence to the bottom of the water. It is an all or nothing game. If her victim is dark of heart, they drown her without remission. If her soul is pure and noble, they take her to a paradise kingdom at the bottom of the river. Only a select few are allowed to return from there. When they do, they appear on the ground with dry clothes and magic in their eyes. blessed. Your future is bright from then on. Whoever returns home from the kingdom of the Mami Wata amasses fortune, is acclaimed by his neighbors and embraces glory forever.
This week, Vice President Rafael Yuste admitted contacts with Messi’s entourage so that he could return to Barça. There are few rational reasons to want the Argentine, who will turn 36 in June, to return to what was his home. Although his quality is indisputable, he would arrive with many years in his boots, no longer hungry for the World Cup, he would have to juggle to fit his salary into the battered finances of the culés and his presence would go against the commitment to build a team young.
But none of that matters.
For football lovers, the only place that allows you to be a child forever for 90 minutes, the hope of seeing Messi’s last dance at Barça, the club that saw him grow up, is a chance for dreams to come true. impossible. The option for the ten to return from his journey through the depths of the river, after being trapped by the Parisian songs of Mami Wata, and set foot on the ground to kiss the last Blaugrana glory is not a matter of reason; it’s heart.
There is no doubt: Messi must return so that the Camp Nou applauds him, cries for him and pays him the tributes that were lost in those sudden and fleeting tears of his goodbye. But above all to allow us to wish that fairy tales existed. To dream that, in his last dance, Messi says goodbye with a Champions League.
Impossible? So is returning from the city of the Mami Wata in the depths of the Congo River.
But what if he comes back?
