To be el "Gringo" Scotta

"...Gooooooool de Scottaaaaa..!" the AM radio blasts another formidable shot crystallized in goal by the so-called San Lorenzo's tailgunner.

Ariel listens to the narration, hallucinated by the proficiency of the Sunday's hero: 
"El Gringo Scotta! El Gringo Scotta; Scotta. Scotta...San Lorenzooo 1...Bocaaa 0."
 
The poster showing the classic San Lorenzo team of 1974 beholds him from the silent wall. 

When playing football with his friends Ariel always was Scotta, that kind of rustic yet effective 9, the man of the miracles, the one who was always there to send the ball into the goal, there, always waiting, fishing for a ball, a '9' like the old-good '9's of yore: 
the saviour of the agonic goal in extra time, right then, when a match is only an anguished metaphor of the death and of the oblivion.
 
And needless is to say that Ariel wore -always-, his San Lorenzo's t-shirt, la Azulgrana, the blue-red with the clamorous '9' in white, on his back, the 9 of Scotta: el "centroforward", the man of the last minute's miracle.
 
Ariel is 14, and how many times his father took him to see San Lorenzo...the mythic champion of the national tournament playing at the "Gasómetro", the old stadium of La Plata Avenue, that stadium, the same which doesn't exist anymore, that same which is a Carrefour mall now.
 
To be the "Gringo" Scotta was his only wish, his only yearning, his absolute and imperative obsession.
 
One Sunday afternoon, Ariel disappeared forever from and out of the life, because he wasn't seen anymore.
 
From the poster, showing the classic San Lorenzo's team, that of 1974, among Telch, Olguín and Glaría, Ariel-Scotta smiled with roguish 1974's gesture...a 1974's Sunday Sun was light, condemn and cage for the eternal saviour of the last minute, impossible..possible inverse metempsychosis for the man of the miraculous draw in extra time, trapped in time and in space forever
caught into the melancholic paper of a melancholic poster of 1974, forever more. 

Never, nevermore.

 



The wall was more silent now.