Victory over Poltava

These days, football is said more or less, with the exception of those who are in blissful ignorance of how the goalkeeper differs from the judge and why one can grab the ball with their hands, and the others cannot be.

Although I do not belong to the indicated category of citizens and, moreover, I can, as it seems to me, distinguish good football from bad, I am still interested in football, to put it mildly, not too intensively, I am not suffering from any teams and, I am not very inspired by stormy and, sudden cries, coming from time to time from time to time from the windows of neighboring apartments.

However, such a thing as a European championship, when I manage, I try to watch. This is still football, not just that. I also watched the Russian-Swedish game.

And a couple of days before that I flew from Sweden, where I spent several days in the house of my old friend. They also watched football. Naturally, those matches where the Swedes played. The owner is about the same fan as me, but for obvious reasons, he is clearly clearly sympathetic to the Swedish team. I attributed this bashfulness to the expense of particularly understood hospitality: what if the guest is from another country, especially from a rival country, his patriotic impulse will seem tactless.

However, I most likely fantasize - he just considered that the intellectual did not stake to waste, and publicly, his emotional energy on such a trifle in essence, like a sweaty running around twenty puffing men on a rectangular lawn. One way or another, but when the Swedes won the Greeks, he clearly perked up, but when the Swedes lost to the Spaniards, he reacted quite philosophically.

We, of course, not only spent time at the television screen. We walked around the neighborhood, we ate the salmon lushed by the owner, we drank the Swedish vodka "Absolute" I brought from Moscow, we ate a delicious local strawberries and talked a lot. About Russia, of course. The owner is a playwright, a Chekhov translator, a former journalist and diplomat who lived in Moscow for many years, and now a university professor of Slavicism. So what we also had to talk about, if not about Russia.

“You seem to have a holiday today,” the owner said. “What kind of holiday is this, I can't understand?” - "Yes, I also can’t understand very much. No one can particularly understand. We now have such holidays. And on this day, if my memory does not change me, Russia announced its independence." - "Independence from whom?" - "From the USSR. She seemed to leave the Soviet Union." “I see,” said the owner. “But since here in the West of the USSR and Russia were always perceived as synonyms, it can be said that Russia has lost their height.” I decided that for a foreigner such a pun can be considered quite successful, and offered to drink, which we did.

Then he said: "I have not been to Moscow for a long time. How is it now?" - "Differently". - "Well, if in one word?" - “If in a word, then this word is“ longing. ” -“ But why? ”” You won’t tell you right away. Come. In fact, now it’s quite interesting now, ”I said not quite consistently, and we, saying with the chorus of Skol, again drank along the glass of“ Absolute ”.

Then we again started talking about football and remembered that the "our" teams have a ambulance. “Our fan -patriotic community,” I say, “suddenly remembered the Poltava these days. And yours?” This owner was terribly amused. “Our?” He asked. “Well, you don’t live here with passions of three -century prescription. And in general it is no longer customary to talk about football in military terms. Football is not a battle, but a game. However, we say that we also have such ones. But they are very small and they are completely marginal. And they gather, no matter how ridiculous, the monument to Karl the Twelve. And you are probably joking?” “They joke,” I did not fully agree. “But, firstly, for some reason they joke in this way, and secondly, not everyone jokes.” And we told each other a magic word Skol.

And the game of the Russian team from the Swedish turned out to be honest and beautiful.

While I was watching this game, I ran out onto the balcony from time to time and watched it at another game. Varied, I must say. Interesting. Uneven.

First, three young men of the Central Asian appearance and with not very sober plastic, carrying the Russian flag and shouting "Russia, go ahead" were passed under the balcony. When they disappeared around the corner (I think that very on time), five appeared in the vests, excluding the optimistic slogan "We will tear everyone on x ..!" When they caught up with a aunt with two bags in their hands, one of them affectionately greeted her: “Grandma, not sink! We are ahead of all! Ole-! Ole-Ole-Ole!” I don’t know how much the aunt managed to fulfill this kind of son’s kind, but, judging by their not quite angelic appearance and style of social behavior, it is easy to assume that she could well could not restrain herself.

Then, stripping all kinds of clothes from himself on the move, a very excited group of a completely adult type of men of the Myasnitsky type appeared. One of them, running to the car, obediently standing at a traffic light, cracked on her hood with his fist. A phlegmatic driver got out of the car, who turned out to be one and a half more than the owner of the fist, and with his fist busily and completely silently moved him along the kumpol. "Swedes - suckers and fagots!" - Holding on his feet somehow on his feet, he leaned in the direction of a retreating car, offended in his best feelings.

Well, the firecrackers by itself. In a word, as many media reported to the next morning, spontaneous folk glee occurred. It was it that happened. As skillfully, it happened.

And well, I would say that the football players who played their game are in no way to blame for the fact that they come across such fans who are no longer about football, but about raising from the knees and about "all breaks." Well, about "Poltava", of course. And this is in the 21st century. However, this is in the modern world of the XXI century, and someone and XVIII still have not really come.

And the football, I repeat, was excellent - modern, artistic and free. And the football players exactly played, not fought. And their victory was completely deserved. Because there was no “sentence at the gate in the game” in the game, no one, thank God, imagined that behind him the “border strip is going”, and there was no “Poltava” there. It was not a victory “near Poltava”, but “over Poltava”, and it was surprising and optimistic. It was, perhaps, temporary, possibly random, but still victory.

And about who will definitely assign this honest victory, what to say? It is clear who. Those who always usurp all other people's victories.