Ins Netz gegangen

I bought a victory, shining, cold, without sweat.

The trophy is a spell. It conjures flags, anthems, the heart of an entire nation. But like any spell, it has a price. Whoever pays gets closer. Whoever doesn't pay stays a shadow before a light he isn't allowed to light himself.

I placed this trophy in the shopping net, between artificial fruit that will never ripen. Two replicas, close together. Of the gold, only a shimmer shows through the mesh, the rest hidden by grapes and apples.

I know this net from the weekly shopping trip. It's the vessel of the ordinary citizen, no podium, no VIP section, no private box. In it, he carries his nation home, his jersey, his flag, his belief in a game he can often only afford to watch on a screen. His experience of the World Cup resembles the artificial fruit in the net: it looks like the real thing, but never ripens into a memory of his own, forever staying just short of having been there.

The stadium stays distant, behind a paywall. The trophy has long been hanging in the net, half-hidden, a gleam among the fruit, packaged for those who can only watch. The real victory is elsewhere. It belongs only to those who can afford it.