From schoolgirl to doctor to teacher — always an Argentina fan

I have been doing embarrassing things in the name of Argentina for longer than I care to admit.

The worst or maybe the best, depending on how you look at it, happened sometime in Grade 8 or 9.

It was the Copa America, a match was scheduled for 7am, and I had to go to school.

I walked into class carrying that specific, unbearable anxiety of someone who desperately needs to know a score.

And for reasons I cannot fully explain to this day, it did not occur to me to look it up online.

The internet simply did not exist in my brain at that moment. What existed was one friendly teacher and his phone. So I took his permission and called my friend to ask the score.

Another teacher caught me. Assuming I was up to something terrible, she reported it immediately to my mother, who, by some perfect twist of fate, teaches at the same school.

At that time our school had strict restrictions against using phones. The score, for what it is worth, did not justify the consequences.

Fast forward to 2022. I am now a fully qualified doctor, doing my medical officership on the surgical floor.

A gruelling night duty. My friend is working in post-op. We finish our rounds, the ward settles, and we head straight to the surgeon's lounge.

Argentina are in the semi-finals.

We watched a 3-0 win over Croatia together at some ungodly hour. And somewhere between the goals, all of it comes rushing back.

Almost six years of medical school. The internship. The jerseys. Every Argentina heartbreak we had survived, every tournament that ended too soon, every year we told ourselves -- this time.

Not knowing. Not even daring to imagine that this would actually be the year. That Lionel Messi would lift it. That everything we had been carrying since childhood would finally, impossibly, be worth it.

We had no idea, sitting in that lounge, that we were days away from living our biggest dream.

It is 2026 now. I have switched jobs. I teach at a medical college, and I stand in front of students the way my teachers once stood in front of me.

Another World Cup is here. Argentina comes up in class. I talk about football. Nobody reports it to anyone's mother.

When I look back, from that phone call to the surgeon's lounge to the classroom; it spans 16 years of loving one team through every version of myself. Schoolgirl. Medical student. Intern. Doctor. Teacher.

Surreal is the only word I have for it.