INTERNACIONAL INCONCLUSIVISTA

Um casal que aqui passou vindo da esquina. Vinham de mão dada, ela na dianteira. Ele dava para o gordito e era careca, desses carecas só de cocuruto e franja, a toda a volta do crânio uns fiapos de cabelo ainda visíveis, ralos e translúcidos, enfim, uma negação de qualquer ordem. Ela era discretamente agradável, tinha umas feições regulares e umas cores, do cabelo, dos olhos, da pele, sadias. Denotava brio na toilette, os tecidos ricos e largos em tons de terra todos aprumados em negligências calculadas. Mas ei-los que saem já do café, as mãos ainda dadas, despacharam a bica enquanto, sentado na esplanada, lhes refazia a imagem de memória, e ela continua na frente, ele vem meio-braço atrás, à laia de atrelado. Ela leva o queixo lançado, dá passos decididos, trá-lo, objectivamente, pela mão. Enquanto eles se afastam, dou por mim a pensar que ela está com ele porque se sente mais bonita ao lado de um homem que não o é. E vou imaginando-a crescendo sem compreender a falta de reconhecime...

After the final day of last season and following what is, it seems, a regular exercise amongst the FPL content producers I usually listen to (Fantasy Football Scout and Let’s Talk FPL), I made a reflection on lessons learned. I actually pointed down some topics in a paper sheet and during my pre-season tinkering I ran it through a couple of times to try and structure my team making the most out of my experience over last year, which was, necessarily, also the result of all my precedent FPL years. Five gameweeks into the new season and I gladly see I respected the lessons learned list almost completely, the exception being when I brought Martial in in GW3. That meant I didn’t learn from one of the lessons: «avoid injury-prone players» . Martial ended up playing just once for my team, as GW4 found him injured already. Complaining about the irony, injustice or sheer bad luck of this event – “Now that I got him in, he’s injured!” – seems foolish when facing the lessons learned sheet. I s...

It’s remarkable how predominant the memory of the bad decisions can be. It’s as if I could recall all the 50-50 decisions I got wrong ever since pre-season and simultaneously forgot, ignored or devalued all those I actually got right. This is certainly linked to the strongly superstitious facet of my managerial self (an attribute I actually related to the game itself in my precedent text). But there’s more to it. One could even say it’s some sort of a dissatisfaction. And a dissatisfaction that is seemingly independent of objective criteria: the fact is one can have a great gameweek, largely beating the average and overscoring all the private league’s competition, and still think – “Oh, if only I benched Salah instead!...” – if that means an additional point. There’s a psychological effect to this that one should not lessen. The game is, or should be, about having fun. And such dynamic is often depressive. Using such a word - «depressive» - in the context of a mere FPL chronicle will...