March 30, 2022 / Page 21 / Lun.

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Goodbye to the Golden Generation

It's Life, Do Not Resist

Esteban Abarzúa

Perhaps this is one more way of dying: the best moments of your team pass in front of your
eyes while a distant voice tells you that it is not time yet to go towards the light.

he first piece of advice Marcelo Bielsa gave to a Chilean player, on

Tuesday, August 21, 2007, at the Liga Aeropuerto fields, at ten
o'clock in the morning, was for central defender Waldo Ponce:
"Don't align yourself with whoever is passing the ball, look for a diagonal, the
game is telling you that”. One month earlier, Chile had lost 6-1 to Brazil in the
Copa América, and went back to the old habit of reinventing itself after a
defeat. When we talk about life, it is difficult to decide when a story begins or
when it ends, because that really depends on how we want to tell it, and a
football team can also be a place where, once in a while, if we keep respectful
silence, the voices of the ancient heroes who engraved their hearts on the
team’s jersey can be heard. They are not ghosts, they are cumulative vestiges
of experience that build an identity, a certain feeling, a dream, or simply a way
of being there, match after match, even when the game's answer is, “No. Not
today.”
Fourteen years, seven months and nine days after Bielsa, what remains
of that original dream –the one that marked an era in Chilean football– has all
but vanished; all we know for certain is that we went on a voyage from “we
want” to “we can,” and now that the party is over we have to pay the bill. First,
Chile had to learn how to win; and then had to learn the hard way, blow after
blow, what comes after winning. It’s an emptiness that sooner or later usurps
the place where joy once was. In the 202 soccer games that La Roja played
from the first day of Bielsa as manager until last night we were happy most of
the time. And when we weren’t happy, at least we were able to face each
setback with dignity, because in that era what used to be impossible became
probable. We won the Copa América twice in finals against Argentina, and we
kicked the world champion, Spain, out of the World Cup in Brazil 2014.
Ninety-nine years had to pass for the Chilean national team to win its first
continental championship title, but the six years that have passed since the
New Jersey Copa América final feel like an eternity.
Suddenly, we understand that hope is assistant coach Bonini yelling
encouraging expletives as Chupete Suazo steps onto the pitch to play against
Uruguay at Montevideo’s Centenario stadium; it’s Fabián Orellana shooting
across the goal to score in Chile’s first official victory against Argentina; it’s
Mark González header against Switzerland at the Nelson Mandela stadium; it’s
Gary Medel playing injured at the Mineirao against Brazil; it’s Alexis Sánchez
scoring the decisive penalty kick, Panenka-style, at the Estadio Nacional the
night we could finally shout “Champions!”; it’s the birdcage that neutralized
Messi in New Jersey; it’s Claudio Bravo and Arturo Vidal embracing in
celebration, after a discord that hurt all of our souls. Perhaps this is one more
way of dying: the best moments of your team pass in front of your eyes while a
distant voice tells you that it is not time yet to go towards the light.
Chile did not win any trophies under Bielsa, but they did win other
things, and that is why we are where we are today. In “Red Eyes”, the
documentary about qualifying for South Africa 2010, each of his statements
feels like a kind of slap in the face that reaches to the harsh reality of today. In
the first scene of that movie, as fans celebrate Chile’s qualification to the 2010
World Cup, Bielsa says: “We should make it clear to the majority that success
is an exception. Human beings succeed only occasionally; more often they just
prepare to fight, and they strive, but only win from time to time, very rarely.”
But Bielsa is not the only one speaking frankly to us from the dawn of
the Golden Generation. There are also the players from earlier generations,
those who gave their best, even to the point of tears, and who came to believe
after their failure that everything was hopelessly lost. The first twenty
minutes of that film uncomfortably resemble what we’re facing today: defeat,
the sense of failure, the pain. But all of that was not wasted time, it is the
nourishment that will raise the next generation. It is only natural that some
fade away so that others can take their place in the limelight: it’s life, do not
resist.