Condemned to glory – Washington de Assis | OneFootball

Friends, we made it through.

And since today we suffer from the almost incurable illness of skepticism and opinions guided and grounded in the shallowest and most absolute lack of understanding of what football is and, worse still, what Fluminense is, I find myself confronted with the mob of the idiots of objectivity. One need only scan the internet to see that they are all there, standing by, armed with their cold analyses, their inert numbers, and their congenital myopia, decreeing that yesterday’s limited football has already reached its peak. We are, according to the fools — those same ones who behave like leaders of modern sects — irredeemably condemned to die in the semifinal. For truly I say to you: ignore them. Let them keep the gray skepticism of cowards. I prefer lyrical delirium. I am not blind to the dreadful, labored, and painful first half, but Fluminense has never fit within the four lines of base logic. I side with the Supernatural of Almeida. I side with the miraculous saintliness of Fábio, with Hulk’s surgical pass and Canobbio’s unaccountable lightning bolt. Because, my friends, one need only travel through the centuries for the glaringly obvious to leap before your eyes: Fluminense does not merely play football; Fluminense fulfills a tragic and glorious destiny before storming Olympus.

We do not fit into a bureaucratic report. Never. We were born predestined to write epics. The memory of the unbelievers is always short and ungrateful — because that drives engagement. They prefer to cling to a single cold night, to a tedious first half, rather than remember. Have they already forgotten “yesterday”? Have they forgotten that night when Beira-Rio roared in triumph after a deceptive draw at the Maracanã, ready for our wake, and we tore history from the throat of destiny? Or when we were in purgatory in La Paternal, with one man less, until Samuel Xavier unleashed a thunderbolt into the top corner?

And for those who think this mystique is a recent thing, one need only look to the past that forged us. Remember 2005, when the abyss opened up before a defiant Volta Redonda and Antônio Carlos’s saving header, in the dying moments, made the Maracanã explode in pure redemption. Or go back to 1995, to the apotheosis of the immortal Fla-Flu, with Aílton’s bewildering dance and Renato Gaúcho’s blessed belly defying eternity. I could stay here, recalling and delighting in the bygone days of our history. But to support my point of view, that is enough.

They will say I am naive, a sickening optimist, a complete madman who sees virtue in chaos. Let them say it! When everything seems settled, when pagan reason pushes us toward the grave and the experts decree our last rites, Fluminense grows gigantic in pain. It is the classic movie script: the hero gets beaten, bleeds, agonizes through two hours of pure torment, only to triumph in the last thirty seconds of film. That is Fluminense. It is the triumph of passion over logic. We are more alive than ever.

We are going to bleed against the next opponent. It is easy to foresee brutally hard matches on plastic turf or on the steep slope where oxygen is a luxury. It matters little. It will be so, because Fluminense is not for those who think this or that. Fluminense is for those who believe.

Have a good week, Washington de Assis

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.