How many times you were told “no”?
That you couldn’t study something you wanted.
That you couldn’t devote yourself to art.
That you couldn’t work.
A teacher or a boss — it’s full of those —
but also a stranger.
A friend, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, even your own parents.
Those “no” that hurt, that make you suffer.
And were you prepared to hear that “no”, to accept it?
How do you face a “no”?
To answer to that “no”, I thought of a challenge.
And for that need a volunteer of the 10,000 people here.
Please come.
Hi Ezequiel, how are you?
An applause for Ezequiel.
(Applause)
You are going to stand here,
Bautista is going to stand here
and Augusto is going to stand exactly here next to this table.
And the goal of this challenge is that Bautista rolls the ball
and you have to try to save it, so it doesn’t leave the stage.
At the same time, two seconds later,
Augusto is going to roll the bottle.
Imagine what happens if the bottle falls.
Then, you have to try to reach the goal and I will rebuke you.
I’ll tell you: “Ezequiel, you’re not going to achieve the goal.”
You are ready? Are you ready?
So, let’s go!
Easy, take it easy, easy, easy.
Easy, you made the effort, you thought about it.
You will have second turn.
An applause for Ezequiel, man, come on!
(Applause)
Now I will ask you to step aside and I’ll try myself.
And, if you dare to, you have a rematch after me. Are you in?
I’m going to try it too.
So far, I never did this. Let’s do it!
(Applause)
Now you have the chance to try again.
When I say “go!”, we do it.
Go! Come on, Ezequiel, come on!
It doesn’t matter. Easy!
An applause for Ezequiel.
(Applause)
There is no victory nor defeat here.
What there is here, how I call it, is
“the challenge of giving it all.”
Ezequiel didn’t know what was it about and he played.
The fact of being convinced,
the fact of having your values, your principles,
and give yourself totally to something, that’s worth it enough.
The process is worth it.
I kept the ball, right?
It’s my lifelong companion.
And since I was a child I had two coaches
who taught us how to win by playing good.
A bit of the two things.
Sometimes people make the distinction, that you cannot do both.
Or you win or you play well.
Yiyo and Ramón.
Ramón had a very special “no”.
Ramón’s “no” was something like this:
“Nah, boy. Kick the ball back.”
That was Ramón’s “no” and to this day,
is still lingering in our heads.
What did that mean?
It meant that if you’re giving your back
and you have two guys behind you,
and you want to turn around,
thinking more of the individual rather than the collective,
your team surely loses.
Surely the other team will keep the ball.
And they taught us these game rules, these group laws.
We called it “playing good,” playing by touching the ball.
And they were the first to say “no” to something that I felt.
They told me I couldn’t play in the offensive.
I played 11, I scored goals.
They said: you have to play in the back
to play forward you should be good, you have to play 3.
At first, I didn’t want to.
And well, I had to accept it.
And that “no” ended up being an opportunity to learn.
At that time, I learned a lot with what I saw,
I had guys who inspired me.
Idols, mirrors.
And I set for myself a goal, maybe for my age,
the year in which some of you were born.
Around ’84, ’85, in Argentinos Juniors.
Argentinos Jrs comes from a neighborhood and could be almost world champion.
It was Americas’ champion.
Playing well, keeping its roots and keeping its pride.
Giving it all to that playing style.
That was a play that lasted 30 seconds
from the start of the game.
It ends with a goal from Pepe Castro.
(Applause)
And in ’86, everyone remembers of Maradona’s goal,
I want to mention Valdano’s goal in the finals of the World Cup.
Pumpido grabs the ball
and Valdano starts a kind of wild counterattack from the right side.
For those who never played soccer, it’s totally to the right,
and notice where Valdano will finish the action.
It will end after passing the ball to Maradona
and Enrique, from the left.
Totally on the other side.
You can shout it, Goal! You can shout it.
In this, it has to do with a physical performance as well.
The muscles giving it all, it’s all wired, from the guts.
And it’s so cool to engage with the best players.
I always played in low divisions,
and later with the super stars I had to play with.
They seem unreachable.
I dreamed of being there one day, of being a professional.
And 20 years later, this happened.
World Cup 2006, we get the ball back and the game begins.
Argentina starts kicking the ball and starts playing in a way
that made us feel very good,
we were convinced of how we played.
There is a minute of ball possession, we all touch the ball.
Going from one side to the other.
From Mascherano to Maxi Rodríguez.
Some were already missing some of the players.
Riquelme, Cambiasso.
And the play has rhythm, apart from the domain of Argentina,
It looks it’s going forward but then the “touch back” again, right?
Starting again and again, thinking collectively.
Until it gathers speed.
You can see a kind of dance on the play.
Cambiasso gets in and engages in the attack.
Well, at least I touched the ball a little bit.
And there Saviola begins to speed it up.
One, two, he sees Cambiasso,
Cambiasso, Crespo’s backheel and —
Shout it, come on!
Audience: Goal!
Everything we talked about before is symbolized in this goal.
To give it all, the synchronicity and energy ready for the team.
To leave the individual inclinations aside for the team’s sake, to make it work.
And let everything flow.
At NBA, in NBA basketball,
they call it “the zone” when you reach this kind of moments.
When everything flows and it feels like you are levitating,
everything is perfect.
That impossible plays works, you strike the shot,
the defense is solid.
I like to call it, “happiness trance”.
A trance of happiness.
Because in defeat you learn, of course do you,
the scars make you better and you want to review and correct.
But we have to learn to see these moments,
and then feel them.
Enjoy them and learn to take care of our happiness trance.
For that you have to build and work a lot and you have to drop
a ball or a bottle.
And you need a lot of discipline.
And build an almost absolute trust with your colleagues.
Almost as if it were a brotherhood.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a month or a year
to get to that trance of happiness.
And for that you have to say “no” at some point,
you have to position yourself.
I had to tell “no” to my dad when I was 12 years old,
he wanted me to study in the same school as him,
the Nacional Buenos Aires, like my sister.
A very demanding public school, so when I was 12 years old, I said:
“No, dad, I want to be a soccer star.”
— Twelve years I was — I’m not going to study at that school.
Now that I’m a father, I imagine what happened to him.
But hey, he supported me and all my family followed at that time.
And then, well, I had to stand a lot of “no”.
That I couldn’t play with long hair,
that I couldn’t throw myself to the ground,
— a first division coach told me once —
And even that I shouldn’t I ran so much.
And that “don’t run so much”
came from a guy who was caring for me as well.
He’d say: spare yourself, or you won’t stand it.
Then all the “no” were somehow
an opportunity to learn.
And I also had to say no, already as a professional,
to the Paris Saint-Germain coach.
I felt great there, imagine, everything is cute in Paris!
But he told me: “If you want to renew for the next year and we buy you,
you don’t have to play half of the matches with the National Team.”
And I said no, thinking that we were going to talk about the contract
or something else… I had to leave.
But hey, it’s a decision, it’s a position.
We are all surrounded by people who have their own preconceptions.
It must happen to you too.
Not cannot date a person of your same gender.
Don’t get involved, because it can bring you a problem.
I believe that standing for your ideals always has an added value.
Me as a player and a public person,
at one point I said “no”,
and I will keep saying it until the day I die:
no to the military dictatorship.
Never again in this country the military dictatorship.
(Applause)
And no to those who don’t protect and don’t take care of the invisible heroes,
our teachers, our professors.
(Applause)
When they told us “no” to me and my wife,
when we dreamed of helping Argentina at a time of a political crisis
and we dream of making a book, they said “no”,
“you are not going to reach great writers or artists.
You will not be able to convince the unions to give up their part.”
And yet every “yes”, I’m going to name some people who left us already:
Juan Gelman, Luis Alberto Spinetta,
Roberto Fontanarrosa, Abelardo Castillo —
(Applause)
Every “yes” from them pushed us to put together the book,
and encourage reading.
Of course, the book in itself is cute,
but fundamentally thanks to all of you who bought that book,
we rebuilt two schools in Santiago del Estero.
(Applause)
When I was your age I met José Pékerman.
Argentina was coming from a horrible time with youth teams,
with many “no” and indiscipline.
José takes me just before I start the practices for a dream,
that was to reach the World Cup, first.
He says to me: “you have to play left central, play 6.”
I always played from left back,
I always saw it from this perspective, and I had never played there.
And instead of saying no to him,
and staying in my comfort zone,
-I knew all the shortcuts there- he convinced me.
And I gave it all with him too, with a project.
Spain was the favorite team.
They had Raúl, Morientes, great players.
And Brazil too.
We lost the South American Cup final
and we reached the U-20 World Cup final
in Qatar ’95 and this happened.
Announcer: When you said all that I didn’t remember.
When I saw the ball in the air I —
JP Sorín: Do you remember Pumpido? The ball going for Valdano?
Announcer: The Argentine goalkeeper didn’t make a single mistake
in the whole championship —
JP Sorín: And Sebastián Pena, Ibagaza, Coyette grabs it.
And a play starts to develop that will end up in that acceleration
as it used to be, with a double wall.
Biagini-Coyette, Biagini-Coyette.
And now I want everyone to shout it!
Goal!
Audience: Goal!
(Applause)
Announcer: Goal!
They will have rains of “no”, winds of “no”.
Super blows of “no”.
Follow your instinct, pursue your trance of happiness.
Give it all, go for the bottle,
go for the ball, always.
Give it all to the fullest.
And to all those who once told you “no”, watch out!
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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