Translation of the headline: ‘Is the World Cup final already decided? A children’s book published in the US predicts the result’
Just because the Tontolares have been rather neglected doesn’t mean they’ve lost their appeal.
The World Cup is a breeding ground for nonsense because, once the thousand or so trivial anecdotes and statistics have been exhausted, all that’s left is pure rubbish. Sergio has published on La Sexta (though it’s been picked up by almost all the media) one of these headlines with a daft question, and adds this clumsy lead-in, to which he tacked on a second daft question:
"Published on 2 June in comic book format, the book recounts, goal by goal, what might happen in this Sunday’s match between Spain and Argentina. Is it a warning, a spoiler or a very accurate prediction?"
There’s a quick and easy answer to those two questions, but it would spoil the magic of the dandelion. The first answer is NO. Nothing is written in the stars, and the second is that this isn’t a warning or a spoiler, because there’s no script, let alone an accurate prediction – since nobody knows whether Schrödinger’s cat has entered this box. It’s a work of fiction, fantasy. A bloody fairy tale. Like Little Red Riding Hood or Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution.
The outcome of this exercise in laying bait for gullible devotees of magical thinking is left to the whims of probability, locked in a fierce battle with an infinite number of possible events.
Turning to the media in search of coherent answers, only to find absurd questions, is the best example one could give to illustrate the endless decline and agony of organisations that call themselves ‘journalistic’.
The classic examples of nonsense in the football circus always end up touching on these topics – from fortune-telling to the utterly laughable world of numerology. Thus, the press – ever keen on trivialities and quick, cheap clicks – once regaled us with hundreds of silly stories about ‘Paul’ the octopus and ‘Cabeçao’ the tortoise at the 2010 World Cup, and another whole load about the kitten‘Mishy Mishy’ from Ciudad Teal at the 2014 World Cup, as well as its counterparts, the partridge‘Taco’ and the cat‘Aquiles’, at Euro 2020.
In short, what these idiots are telling us is that the children’s book in question, which was supposedly published on 2 June in the United States, tells the story of a match between Spain and Argentina as finalists in the 2026 World Cup. Leo Messi scores a goal around the 15th minute, but Spain manage to equalise and then, in the 88th minute, La Roja score a second goal and win the World Cup. All of this without any involvement from Oliver and Benji.
That’s how this nonsense works: you make a daft bet, and if it comes true, you can pass yourself off as someone with supernatural powers of prophecy and shout the obligatory ‘I told you so!’; and if it doesn’t come true, not even Perry will remember it. In either case, the press will already have run a free advertising campaign for the publisher that would have cost a fair bit of cash – unless, of course, they’ve been paid to pull the wool over our eyes.
