Records are meant to be broken, and so on. Generational shifts are part of the natural cycle of life. One cannot be and have been. Age is just a number: absolute nonsense, regularly contradicted by joints that are suddenly less flexible, a skeleton that is now stiffer, and movements that are gradually less agile.
Novak Djokovic certainly looked his 39 years, and especially his 14 years older than Jannik Sinner, in the final of the last Wimbledon. And yet, by some mechanism, I found myself empathizing with an ‘old man’ who is actually 17 years younger than me. The wild hope that ‘the last best chance’ would finally be the right one.
Throughout this World Cup that is coming to an end, without me having seen a single match, I wanted to talk about football without talking about football. And a few minutes before the kick-off of the final, the outcome of which will be known long after ‘the hour we go to press’, here I am once again preferring a final consecration for a 39-year-old Lionel Messi rather than wishing for the emergence of a new generation, in this case that of a 19-year-old Lamine Yamal, who still has his whole life ahead of him. A characteristic symptom when nostalgia is more suggestive than the future.
Besides Messi, other sympathetic ‘old men’ were playing their last World Cup there: Luka Modric (41), Manuel Neuer (40), Josimar Dias Vozinha (40), and Harry Kane (33). And many of them will never be crowned. Adios, my friends.
Slower, lower, weaker. By Djokovic’s own admission, a half-second delay on every shot: age may be just a number, but the heart truly has wrinkles.
Nasolo-Valiavo Andriamihaja
Captured & Published at: 2026-07-20 06:41:40 (Madagascar Local Time EAT)
Original Source: https://www.lexpress.mg/2026/07/rides-lame.html