A Mesoamerican god weeps as the Latinos are snuffed out of FIFA 2018

A Mesoamerican god weeps as the Latinos are snuffed out of FIFA 2018 on Business Standard. South America has lost four World Cups on the trot, including the current one in Russia; sad, for a continent known to have set benchmarks in the game

Latest News There is an endearing moment in every tragedy. In Friday's FIFA 2018 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 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it could have been Mayan, Aztec or Inca â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 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 Fifa World Cup 2018 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.