The more the technocrats programme it down to the smallest detail, the more the powerful manipulate it, football continues to be the art of the unforeseeable. When you least expect it, the impossible occurs: the dwarf teaches the giant a lesson, and a scraggy, bow-legged black man makes an athlete sculpted in Greece look ridiculous.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the unpredictable nature of football and how surprises can arise regardless of preparation and expectations.
Eduardo Galeano's quote captures the essence of football as an unpredictable art form where unexpected events can occur, challenging the norms and expectations set by the game's technical aspects and the influence of powerful figures. It emphasizes that even the most unlikely teams or individuals can achieve greatness and teach lessons to those who seem dominant, suggesting that true talent and skill can emerge from the most unexpected sources.
In practice
In a discussion about underdog teams in sports, one could quote this to highlight unexpected successes.
Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.
It is highly improbable that the bureaucrat will put his life on the line. It is absolutely impossible that he'll put his job on the line.
We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people.
History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.
Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.
Movies become living organisms that graduate from a filmmaker's sphere of influence and pretty much look back and tell you how they need to be said goodbye to. A movie often turns around and looks at you and says, "Here is who I am, and that's maybe now how you see me, but that's who I've become." And you've got to be open enough to go with that.
I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.
The power of fantasy is that you can make people understand the deeper realities of our world in a way that they wouldn't normally be able to because of all the things in our world that closes them off.
You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
It's incumbent on us to reach beyond the confines of the institutions that traditionally produce art and find new ways to get it to the people.
A work of art doesn't have to be explained. If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed.
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