The Month We Become Children Again

The World Cup has begun. And, as it does every four years, the world once again pretends to be a village. For a month, borders become pencil-drawn lines, political differences hide behind flags, and millions of people who would never greet each other on the street share the same nervous anticipation over a rolling ball.

This will be Cristiano's last. Messi's last. The final chapter of a story that has captivated us for the past two decades. There are children who learned to read while they were already the best in the world. There are adults who have aged to the rhythm of their goals. And now they arrive here like old gunslingers in a Western film. Still dangerous. Still respected. But already accompanied by the whisper of farewell.

No World Cup ever begins solely in the present. It also starts in memory. Every fan carries an invisible album. Pelé running in footage that starts in black and white and continues in a color film. Maradona defying logic and the gods. Romário and Bebeto embracing like twins from different mothers. Zidane pirouetting in verses written on a pitch. World Cups don't belong to the calendar. They belong to childhood. Perhaps that's why we continue to love them. Because they return to us a version of ourselves we thought was lost.

For four years, we are people too busy to visit the child we once were. We pay bills. We keep schedules. We make promises we don't keep. We carry endless worries. Then a World Cup arrives, and we are ten years old again. We believe again that a shot can change a life. That a 90th-minute goal can right an old injustice. That impossible is not a definitive word.

The World Cup is a machine for manufacturing the beauty of childhood within adults who have forgotten how to dream. And perhaps that's why we forgive so much. We forgive the hypocrisy. We forgive the empty speeches. We forgive the officials who speak of equality while kneeling before money. We forgive an organization that long ago chose to sleep alongside power. FIFA changes its scenery, changes its slogan, changes its hosts, but maintains a strange vocation for confusing influence with virtue and wealth with merit.

We know all this. We know too much. But we also know there's a moment when the ceremony ends, the speeches fade, and the ball starts to roll. In that moment, politics loses volume. It doesn't disappear. It never disappears. But it falls silent. And then the most powerful part of humanity enters the field: imagination. Because football is one of the few things capable of uniting sun and shadow. Beauty and misery. Cynicism and innocence. Business and art. 

During a World Cup, an unknown boy can become eternal in an afternoon. A small country can challenge an empire. A single shot can transform into a memory that will survive for decades.

That's why we're still here. Not for Infantino. Not for the sponsors. Not for the falsehood and hypocrisy behind the scenes of power.

We are here for that rare instant when the heart arrives before reason. We are here because we still believe in heroes, even knowing they are human. We are here because football remains the most beautiful excuse for daydreaming.

And because, somewhere between the corruption of men and the purity of the ball, there exists a territory where childhood endures.

The World Cup has begun. In the coming weeks, the world will once again seem both bigger and smaller. Bigger, because it holds all dreams. Smaller, because they all fit inside a ball.