There is an endearing moment in every tragedy. In Friday's FIFA 2008 quarterfinal match between Uruguay and France, a television cameraman caught one such, of a little Latino lad crying softly as he watched his team sink.
While I can't really place a finger on the civilisation – it could have been Mayan, Aztec or Inca – what I do remember reading as a kid is this little bit about a Mesoamerican ballgame in which the goalpost was placed at an elevation, not on terra firma. The object was to get the ball through, and the team that excelled in this effort walked away with the spoils. So far, logical. The losing team, on the other hand, had all its players decapitated and their heads were then offered to the presiding deity in some sort of religious sacrifice.
Grotesque as it was, there was a cloak of fascination that the story wore. And somewhere down the line, I would start comparing the heroes and the losers on the ancient ballcourt with Mario Kempes' boys from Argentina, who took 1978 away from the Dutch in a particularly brutal match. And there was no Diego Maradona then.
That was the first World Cup final I sat right through up to the wee hours over several rounds of coffee and biscuits. It wasn't live but came a few hours after the match was over, as Doordarshan, the only channel in those days, did not have real-time telecasting rights. Although I'd heard of King Pele's exploits from my father and some of my older neighbours in the building, I had never really had the chance to see them on the field, save for a snippet here or there, culled out from television archives.
Yet, Latino football began capturing the fertile imagination of a teenager who had hitherto been fed solely on a diet of cricket and hockey. I'd watch with great wonder Maradona toying with the leather using neither his head, hands or feet, but his shoulder. And although Colombia never ever took the Cup after I began my love affair with the game, the country's goalie, René Higuita's, bravado never failed to astound. While his scorpion save was legendary, if unnecessary, his leaving the goalpost in order to get to the half line was downright foolhardy. Yet, it was entertaining and became a hallmark of the South American style.
Between 1990 and 2002, I'd watch Brazil take the Cup twice and be enthralled by the clockwork mechanism of Romario, Ronaldo (not Cristiano, please), Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos and a host of other stars from that country and other parts of the continent, most of whose names now escape me. Latin American football was about the wild beauty of skills, dribbling and darting runs for the goal. It was an unofficial trademark that the game enjoyed and there was always an invisible dividing line between fans rooting for European teams and those betting on the South Americans.
Post-2002, however, the magic began to fade, and the “lost Indians”, as I would begin calling them, made it to the finals just once, in 2014, when a tired Argentina went down by a solitary goal to the machine-efficient Germans. The Cup winners, in fact, had given a 7-1 drubbing to favourites Brazil in an earlier round. The present tournament has been just as bad as the one in 2006 with not a single Latino team in the last four.
What went wrong? I'm no expert, but my guess is Aztec blood lost the plot by banking on a solitary star – two at the most – to help Latin teams win matches. So, while there was plenty of star appeal in, say, Neymar and Messi, it was either the weight of expectations or their ring-fencing by opponents or both, that saw their teams fare miserably. I'm pretty much inclined to believe that's what happened to Uruguay's Cavani as well, in the pre-quarter against France.
Another risk the star factor entails is that the rest of the team becomes complacent, as was probably the case in Brazil's play-off with Belgium, although I wasn't able to watch that match Friday night. And its 7-1 loss to Germany in 2014 was a classic case in point, with Neymar being out of action following a major injury in Brazil's earlier match against Colombia.
And then, of course, is the unwillingness to experiment with fresh blood. Many of the Latino players, though not really past their prime, have been around long enough to make way for younger players. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be happening. A classic case in point is 31-year-old Messi.
There are bound to be several other reasons for the poor show by the South Americans over the past 16 years. And until they get their heads together and figure it all out, their gods will continue to weep in the avatar of the little boy from Uruguay's defeat against France on July 6.