These days, while watching the European Championship, the author often feels on the edge of losing verticality.
What is meant is that he nearly slides off the sofa, not because of a dazzling dribble by Lamine Yamal, but when certain phrases echo through broadcasts. In sports commentaries, there exists a kind of third language where players do not fall to the ground but rather “lose verticality.” The best part, as the writer Jose C. Vales noted, is that they do not simply “rise up” either; they “regain verticality.” Rather than criticizing this playful neolanguage, it is proposed to go further: as they regain verticality, they also “dismiss the horizontality” that the fall granted, even “despise” that horizontal state.
Watching the Euro with an eye for these expressions makes the game feel twice as rich. For instance, penalties, like energy, are said to “transform.” The verb transformation implies moving from what is behind to what is ahead: turn a penalty into a goal or turn a chance into a penalty. Yet now penalties are not merely scored; they, as Rosalía sings in Saoko, “transform”. It is delightful too that two players chase a truly equal contest for a ball that is, in essence, split between them. Yet, in a biblical review of history, both worry about that broken ball.
There is also excitement in how each image is underscored. In real life, possession would suffice, but in a match one “has possession of the ball.” The author would love to one day “have possession of the ball” as well as possess a ship, a second home on the Costa Brava, and especially the truth. Of course, there is a wish to strike a spherical object as well; kicking a ball is not enough. And, perhaps as much as prizes or lottery, there is a longing to “gain the back” of the opponent, something that happens every few plays in a game.
There are no simple passes down the wings; the field widens and the center is never secured. It is not the first half nor the middle of the clock that matters, but the drive through the midfield toward the equalizer. A peculiar sadness arises when a commentator says a defense “leaks”, as the image conjures a strong urge to urinate, much like the author’s own reaction to certain diuretic beverages during a talk.
This column should not be read as a satire of know-it-all commentary. The neolanguage itself is fascinating. Football narration has given birth to expressions as expressive as “no goal at the rainbow” or “the maximum penalty.” The audience also “asks the referee for time”, just as the author faced in adolescence when peers demanded the time from him. These football phrases have seeped into everyday life as well: people marry “at a penalty”, workers from real estate companies hang up their boots upon retirement, pundits and politicians throw “paper balls” or answer “off the cuff.” Sometimes these lines catch the author “offside” and he asks for them to be repeated “short and to the point.” Still, he enjoys them.
Football narrators, much like children, are creators of language. There are no Germans or Italians, only Teutons and Transalpines, though the French are also seen as Transalpines from the Italian view. The referee can do what nostalgia asks and what science denies: subtract time. Even militaristic rhetoric, with its cannonades and counterattacks, finds a strange appeal here, especially when spoken by its finest poets, as Sergio Ramos once claimed of their moment that they had a “powdery spark” still alive.