A father and his son went to Rivadavia Park last weekend to get the World Cup figurines that were missing from the little boy’s album. His name is Alejandro, he is six years old and trains soccer twice a week in a downtown Buenos Aires club.
It is the new concern: getting miniature portraits of each member of the teams that will soon face each other in Qatar, a city where Argentine fans travel -even by bicycle- or sleep as they can in the streets while the dates arrive.
Even residents are struggling to renew their leases due to the real estate upheaval caused by this event in Qatar. I read a cable where there was talk of 1.2 million fans looking for rent this November in the city due to the Cup.
With the proximity of the event everything has become a bit unhinged. I get counters everywhere. 9 days, 17 hours, 55 minutes, 46 seconds. Questions. When will the World Cup be played? Which countries are going to the World Cup? Who will be the most outstanding Latin American midfielder in the World Cup? News: “They created anti-mufa kits for the World Cup in Qatar and they sold out in a week: I hope they work.”
And there is this exponential increase in the enthusiasm of fans and collectors. Since the summer they have been like crazy asking in kiosks and shops in Buenos Aires. There are also appointments in open spaces, such as Rivadavia Park, to exchange the ones they have repeated. Some make use of networks for that: Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp.
Barely 12 days after it was put up for sale, an Argentine named Valerio Duarte boasted on television that his album was complete. “Thank God I was able to do it. Here came a kind of furor and all that… Euphoric people. The issue is that there is nowhere”, said Valerio, who had started the project with a younger nephew, “a kid”, because he is forty years old, “I am an old man now”.
You will be old, I want to tell you. But I start to look at this little figures. Messi’s, Neymar’s and Cristiano Ronaldo’s were the most difficult for this Valerio. They had become more expensive in a way that he even witnessed, according to the testimony, how some opportunists came to ask for 25 thousand pesos, almost 70 dollars in exchange. bluefor any of them.
I search in Mercado libre, which is like the eBay or Amazon of these regions. Offers from 600 to 7000 for Messi. “Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappé”, the trio for 10,500. Most were edited by Panini, but there is talk that trout versions have emerged that are equally persecuted by fans of the figurines.
The theme of the albums is in the mouth: the radio announcers release it into the ether and then it spreads like spring spores, those seeds that turn the city into a snowfall for so many cottons. That way it reaches the ears of the children and they explain it to their parents, they demand it.
Dispenser of World Cup figures at San Pablo GRU airport ??? pic.twitter.com/HXkCCR2hhF
— Sir Chandler Blog (@SirChandlerBlog) October 29, 2022
The theme reaches one afternoon to the few adults who spend a minute or two of quiet while the children jump like demons or remain in a tree where they carry out experiments thanks to powerful laboratories built in its branches.
“The paper is not good”, says a mother: “it could be better because it tears right away”. After a while, she adds that the famous figurines can be found cheaper in supermarkets.
I go to a kiosk to check the seriousness of the circumstance. I ask: do you have figurines?, and a white man, with one of his upper incisors slightly crooked as a characteristic appearance, looks at me in such a way that I think that if he had had the power to shoot with his eyes I would not be writing this when 9 are missing days, 17 hours, 42 minutes, 51 seconds for the World Cup.
It is a kiosk located on the corner of Arenales and Agüero. I have seen the poster. It has only the written word: No. “It says so TNeveryone knows that we don’t have figurines”, Exequiel tells me, who has spent 25 of his 50 years in this place.
While I’m taking a photo, he’s already stopped looking at me as if thinking he’s “a chump”, or not that, I’m sure he said to himself: “look at this asshole”. He smiles and tells me that this year has been the worst. Everyone wants to have theirs.
Perhaps because it could be Messi’s last World Cup or because Argentina has just won the Copa América. There are never any figures. Ezequiel also had figurines and albums in the World Cups, but when they were full he exchanged them for a soccer ball, which at his time, he says, was very difficult to have.
My children want to exchange their World Cup figurines for the ones they lack. I pass here the list of what they have and what they lack. pic.twitter.com/EmH5koir0U
– Lorraine (@lizlocardozo) November 10, 2022
“Do you know that a friend took out an album from the 2002 World Cup and sold it for 20 thousand mangoes”, says another mother, so enthusiastic. Valerio Duarte was offered fifty thousand for his and it happened a few days ago, I remember what I heard an announcer say.
At last we have the first figurines. We break the cases excited to know which players we get. Nothing from Messi. Neither Ronaldo. Zero Neymar. Not even Di Maria. There are 9 days, five hours, 34 minutes, 39 seconds left until the thing starts.
