EPT
Sándor, by Roberto Vieira
"My eyes travel through the old stadium of Bern. Mud, goalposts and the damned germans made my life a living hell. No matter how much we fought there was always a feet, a deflexion, a warcry in our ears. That wasn't any game, it was the only possible rematch for those ex-soldiers lost in their ruined Germania. After many days I created courage and looked at photographies that Gustav Sebes kept in his home. Poor old man, losing that game made everyone forget the years of victory. Well, on the pictures I could see Grosics trying to punch the ball at the cross on the second goal and being prevented by Morlock. Clear foul. So what? The balls continue to enter the goal in my memory, they'll continue forever. I just wanted to finally sleep, I just wanted to never have stepped in Bern in that stormy day. Not even years later.
Budapest and its streets where I ran after a ball.
Barcelona and this window on the seventh floor.
Bern and the tears on the old Wankdorf stadium.
First the damned germans. Then the damned portugueses.
And now this damned cancer that dominates my movements, that keeps me from heading my imaginary balls.
Now all my days are Bern days. Rainy, damned, days where the balls always bump against the goalpost. Days of ground.
The people visit me and remember my glories, my victories, my photos with the Major. Meanwhile I hear my memories in the dark of dawn, the balls that Czibor and Toth crossed me, the balls that insist in not entering the goal. Gustav perplexed in the train that took us back to Budapest. The military locking Crosics on the jail for treason. Ah, if all goalkeepers were arrested after losing a game!
Sometimes I walk to the window. I look at the people walking in the street. I look at the liberty to come and go, or even the liberty of sleeping without nightmares. Many times I wished to be only one of these hungarians that sell sausage, or a blind and authoritarian military giving his life for the country. Many times I thought I should worry more with the disease entrenched in my body, instead of dreaming with goals I never made. But they say that every player has a soul of a child.
My soul still longs for being a bird, for a ultimate flight, a flight without goalposts, without goalkeepers, without defense, without defeat. A definitive flight. A flight that surpasses the net of Wankdorf, the Danubis' waters, the defenders of the cold war, the prison cell, the tank weapons, my friends' tears, the exile, the land stained with blood, a flight above the Nep Stadium, the Camp Nou, above this world that give us everything and deny us everything. A flight above the cold dawn.
A complete flight ending with an ultimate and fulminant header on destiny..."
Diary of Sándor Kocsis, hungarian goalscorer in the 1954 World Cup, shortly before commiting suicide
