The curse contained in football is also the salvation of players, coaches and fans when plunged into the despair that follows a defeat. Here is an activity in which it’s not enough just to win, but where you must keep on winning – in every season, every tournament and every game. Writers, architects or musicians can relax a little after having created a great novel, a marvellous building or an unforgettable album. They can just do nothing for a while, or at least something less involving. Among the first of these groups, who are the ones I know best, are some individuals who have had greatness bestowed upon them until the end of their days as a result of one esteemed novel written fifty years earlier. In football, however, there is no place for rest or fun. It means very little to have an incredible list of achievements or to have won a title only the year before. It is never acknowledged that expectations have been met, simply demanded that the next match must also be won (something the players also demand of themselves), as if there was always a need to start over with a clean slate, an analogy drawn from the score at the beginning of every match. Unlike other activities in life, sport (but above all football) never accumulates or stores up success, in spite of its trophy rooms and ever-more-valued statistics. To have been the best yesterday is not good enough today, let alone tomorrow. The happiness of days gone by cannot serve to assuage the current anguish, for here there is no consolation in memories, nor is there satisfaction for the once-achieved, nor of course gratitude from the public for the happiness that they were given two weeks earlier. Nor, for the same reason, does the pain and indignation last very long, since from one day to the next it can be converted into euphoria and idol-worship. Maybe that is why football is a sport which incites one to violence, as Cabrera said: it is not because of the kicks, though, but rather the anguish. In turn we should acknowledge that there is something invaluable about football which doesn’t tend to arise in other areas of life: it promotes a short memory, which is the same thing as saying that what it never incites is rancour, a quality which we teach ourselves as adults.