B2 · Upper Intermediate
10 min
sport and culturefootballlatin american identitylanguage and regional variation
Nine Straight, Still No Words for It
Lo que Messi le hace al tiempo
Lionel Messi has just become the first player in history to score in nine consecutive World Cup matches, after Argentina beat Egypt 3-2 in the round of 16. Fletcher and Octavio try to explain why this man keeps doing things nobody thought were possible.
Lionel Messi acaba de convertirse en el primer jugador de la historia en marcar en nueve partidos consecutivos de Copa del Mundo, después de que Argentina derrotara a Egipto tres a dos en los octavos de final. Fletcher y Octavio intentan explicar por qué este hombre sigue rompiendo los límites de lo que creíamos posible.
6 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| racha | streak / run of form | Messi lleva una racha de nueve partidos consecutivos marcando en la Copa del Mundo. |
| reservado | reserved / private | Aunque es el mejor jugador del mundo, Messi tiene una personalidad reservada fuera del campo. |
| identidad colectiva | collective identity | El fútbol funciona como una forma de identidad colectiva en muchos países latinoamericanos. |
| capaz | capable (Spain) / maybe (Argentina) | Es capaz de ganar el partido si sigue jugando así. |
| prórroga | extra time | España ganó el Mundial de 2010 gracias al gol de Iniesta en la prórroga. |
| hincha | fan / supporter | Muchos hinchas se identifican más con su club que con la selección nacional. |
I watched the Egypt match last night, and I genuinely did not know how to feel when he scored.
Like, at a certain point, surprise becomes its own kind of exhaustion.
Es que hay un momento en la carrera de Messi donde ya no puedes reaccionar con asombro.
There's a point in Messi's career where you can no longer react with amazement.
Simplemente asientes.
You just nod.
Como cuando ves salir el sol.
Like watching the sun rise.
Nine consecutive World Cup matches with a goal.
That's across three tournaments.
That's a span of eight years.
He's been doing this since 2018, and he just keeps going.
Y lo que hace que este récord sea especial, Fletcher, no es solo el número.
And what makes this record special, Fletcher, isn't just the number.
Es el contexto.
It's the context.
Otros jugadores marcan en mundiales.
Other players score at World Cups.
Pero Messi lo hace en los momentos de mayor presión, cuando su equipo más lo necesita.
But Messi does it in the highest-pressure moments, when his team needs him most.
Argentina were trailing at halftime, right?
Two-one down to Egypt, and then he just...
turned it around.
Sí.
Yes.
Marcó el empate en el minuto sesenta y tres.
He scored the equalizer in the sixty-third minute.
Y después Argentina ganó tres a dos.
Then Argentina won three-two.
El guion perfecto.
The perfect script.
Siempre el guion perfecto con él.
Always the perfect script with him.
I want to ask you something, because you're a Madridista, and Messi spent his entire club career at Barcelona.
Does that complicate how you talk about him?
Even now?
Mira, la rivalidad entre el Madrid y el Barça es real.
Look, the rivalry between Madrid and Barça is real.
Muy real.
Very real.
Pero hay cosas que van más allá del club.
But some things go beyond the club.
Y Messi, en la selección argentina, es otra cosa completamente diferente.
And Messi, in the Argentine national team, is something else entirely.
That's a remarkably diplomatic answer from someone who once spent forty minutes explaining to me why Barcelona's training methods are fundamentally dishonest.
Los métodos siguen siendo cuestionables.
The methods are still questionable.
Pero el talento de Messi no tiene equipo.
But Messi's talent has no team.
Pertenece al fútbol.
It belongs to football.
Walk me through the record itself.
Nine consecutive matches, but spanning 2018, 2022, and now 2026.
How does the count actually work?
La FIFA cuenta los partidos mundialistas de forma continua.
FIFA counts World Cup matches continuously.
No importa cuántos años pasan entre torneos.
It doesn't matter how many years pass between tournaments.
Si marcas en el último partido de un mundial y en el primero del siguiente, es una racha.
If you score in the last match of one World Cup and the first of the next, it's a streak.
Which means the streak started in Russia in 2018.
And he's been carrying it through a pandemic, through winning the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, through God knows what injuries, and he's still scoring in 2026.
Tiene treinta y ocho años, Fletcher.
He's thirty-eight years old, Fletcher.
Treinta y ocho años.
Thirty-eight.
La mayoría de los futbolistas ya se han retirado.
Most footballers have already retired.
Él está rompiendo récords históricos en unos octavos de final.
He's breaking all-time records in a round of sixteen.
I keep thinking about what this means for Argentina specifically.
Because the relationship between Messi and that country is one of the stranger stories in modern sport.
Es una historia de amor muy complicada.
It's a very complicated love story.
Durante años, los argentinos lo criticaban duramente.
For years, Argentines criticized him harshly.
Decían que no daba suficiente por la selección, que era demasiado frío, que no lloraba como lloraba Maradona.
They said he didn't give enough for the national team, that he was too cold, that he didn't cry the way Maradona cried.
There's a whole cultural dimension there about what Argentina expects from its heroes.
It's not enough to be brilliant;
you have to suffer visibly.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y Messi tiene una personalidad reservada.
And Messi has a reserved personality.
No habla mucho.
He doesn't talk much.
No grita.
He doesn't shout.
Es tranquilo, casi tímido fuera del campo.
He's quiet, almost shy off the pitch.
Para muchos argentinos, eso era un problema.
For many Argentines, that was a problem.
And then 2022 happened.
Sí.
Yes.
Qatar 2022 cambió todo.
Qatar 2022 changed everything.
Ganó el Mundial.
He won the World Cup.
Lloró.
He cried.
Abrazó a sus compañeros.
He hugged his teammates.
Se convirtió en el héroe que Argentina siempre había querido.
He became the hero Argentina had always wanted.
Y ahora, cuatro años después, sigue aquí.
And now, four years later, he's still here.
Okay, I want to zoom out a bit.
Because I think there's a bigger story here about what the World Cup means as a cultural event, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries.
You've covered this tournament multiple times for El País.
El Mundial no es solo un torneo de fútbol.
The World Cup isn't just a football tournament.
Es un momento en el que el tiempo se detiene.
It's a moment when time stops.
En España, en Argentina, en México, la gente organiza su vida alrededor de los partidos.
In Spain, in Argentina, in Mexico, people organize their lives around the matches.
El trabajo, la familia, todo.
Work, family, everything.
I was in Buenos Aires during the 1998 World Cup, actually.
Covering something entirely unrelated to football.
And I remember the city just...
stopped, every time Argentina played.
En 1998 Argentina llegó a cuartos de final y perdió contra Holanda.
In 1998 Argentina reached the quarterfinals and lost to Holland.
Fue un trauma nacional.
It was a national trauma.
Literal.
Literal.
Personas que lloraban en las calles, que no podían ir a trabajar al día siguiente.
People crying in the streets, unable to go to work the next day.
I remember that.
An editor I knew there canceled our interview and just said, very simply, 'today is not possible.' I didn't push back.
Y eso te dice algo importante sobre la cultura futbolística latinoamericana.
And that tells you something important about Latin American football culture.
El fútbol es una forma de identidad colectiva.
Football is a form of collective identity.
No es entretenimiento.
It's not entertainment.
Es algo más profundo, más emocional.
It's something deeper, more emotional.
It's interesting because Spain has that same intensity, but it's slightly different, isn't it?
Spain doesn't have one single national hero the way Argentina has Messi.
Or the way Brazil had Pelé.
España tiene un problema más complicado, que es que hay muchos hinchas que se identifican más con sus clubes que con la selección.
Spain has a more complicated problem, which is that many fans identify more with their clubs than with the national team.
Si eres del Barça, a veces es difícil animar a un equipo lleno de jugadores del Madrid, y viceversa.
If you support Barça, sometimes it's hard to cheer for a team full of Madrid players, and vice versa.
Which is a kind of cultural tension that I think Americans find genuinely hard to understand, because we're used to national teams being the obvious top of the hierarchy.
Claro.
Of course.
En el fútbol europeo, el club es tu tribu desde que naciste.
In European football, the club is your tribe from birth.
La selección es otra cosa.
The national team is something else.
Importante, sí, pero diferente.
Important, yes, but different.
El Mundial de 2010, cuando España ganó, fue el momento en que todo eso se olvidó temporalmente.
The 2010 World Cup, when Spain won, was the moment when all of that was temporarily forgotten.
Tell me about that.
You were there.
Estaba en Johannesburgo para El País.
I was in Johannesburg for El País.
Cuando Iniesta marcó el gol en la prórroga, toda la prensa española, sin importar de qué club éramos, nos abrazamos.
When Iniesta scored in extra time, all the Spanish press, regardless of which club we supported, embraced each other.
Fue un momento muy extraño y muy bonito al mismo tiempo.
It was a very strange and very beautiful moment at the same time.
You don't talk about that one often.
Bueno, es que hay momentos que son difíciles de explicar racionalmente.
Well, there are moments that are hard to explain rationally.
Y el fútbol produce esos momentos más que cualquier otra cosa.
And football produces those moments more than anything else.
Es por eso que Messi, con este récord, toca algo que va más allá del deporte.
That's why Messi, with this record, touches something that goes beyond sport.
Let me push on the implications for a second.
He's thirty-eight.
Argentina could go all the way in this tournament.
If he wins a second World Cup, where does that leave the whole Messi-versus-Maradona debate in Argentine culture?
Esa pregunta es casi peligrosa en Argentina.
That question is almost dangerous in Argentina.
Maradona es algo más que un deportista.
Maradona is something more than an athlete.
Es un símbolo de resistencia, de clase trabajadora, de identidad nacional frente al mundo.
He's a symbol of resistance, of the working class, of national identity against the world.
Messi es diferente.
Messi is different.
Más perfecto, técnicamente.
More perfect, technically.
Pero Maradona tenía una humanidad caótica que la gente amaba profundamente.
But Maradona had a chaotic humanity that people loved deeply.
The hand of God, the cocaine, the weight problems, the politics.
Maradona was a mess in the most human way possible.
And that was part of what made him mythic.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y por eso el debate no se puede resolver con estadísticas.
And that's why the debate can't be settled with statistics.
Son dos tipos de grandeza completamente distintos.
They're two completely different kinds of greatness.
Pero si Messi gana otro Mundial a esta edad, creo que incluso los maradonianos más duros van a tener que admitir algo.
But if Messi wins another World Cup at this age, I think even the most hardened Maradonians will have to admit something.
There's something I caught in how you were talking earlier, and I want to circle back to it.
You used the phrase 'era capaz de marcar,' and I noticed you were using 'capaz' a lot in this conversation.
What's happening grammatically there?
Ah, 'capaz.' Es una palabra muy útil.
Ah, 'capaz.' It's a very useful word.
Significa 'capable' en inglés, pero en español tiene más usos.
It means 'capable' in English, but in Spanish it has more uses.
Por ejemplo: 'es capaz de ganar el Mundial' significa 'he is capable of winning the World Cup,' pero también puedes decir 'capaz que gana' en Argentina y significa 'maybe he'll win,' algo completamente diferente.
For example: 'es capaz de ganar el Mundial' means 'he is capable of winning the World Cup,' but in Argentina you can also say 'capaz que gana,' meaning 'maybe he'll win,' something completely different.
Wait, so the same word means 'capable' in Spain and 'maybe' in Argentina?
That seems like a recipe for confusion at family dinners.
Completamente.
Completely.
Y no es el único caso.
And it's not the only case.
El español tiene muchas palabras que cambian de significado según el país.
Spanish has many words that change meaning depending on the country.
Por eso digo siempre que aprender español es aprender muchos españoles a la vez.
That's why I always say that learning Spanish means learning many different Spanishes at once.
Many different Spanishes.
That's either terrifying or liberating, and I genuinely haven't decided which.
Argentina's still in the tournament, Messi's still scoring, and somewhere in Buenos Aires someone is probably already ordering the cake.
We'll leave it there.