There are peoples who only embrace winners. And there are peoples like the Argentine one, who take to the streets anyway, even when it hurts, even when the trophy has remained on the other side of the ocean.
This Monday, the national team returned home after falling to Spain in the final. And what they found was not silence or reproach: it was a crowd. Thousands of fans gathered around Ezeiza, under freezing winter rain, waiting for hours to see the open-top bus carrying their world runners-up pass by.
The welcome had it all: a red carpet, a Grenadiers band playing “Muchachos”, flags, flares, honking horns. On the runway, painted on the grass in 150-meter letters, a single word that summed it all up: “THANK YOU!”. Three days of work, twenty cans of paint, for a message that could be read from the air.
The night before, as soon as the final ended, a human tide had already filled the Obelisk. Not to mourn the defeat, but to give thanks for the journey.
Messi and De Paul were absent, having stayed in the United States. But the affection was not for one name: it was for everyone. For having reached the very top once again, for having given everything, for representing a country that makes football a way of loving.
They fell in the final battle. But few losing teams have been embraced so warmly.
Thank you, boys. In the rain, an entire country waited for you.