Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
"Soccer has much less to do with sporting triumphs than with the desire to form an emotional community." JUAN VILLORO
MEXICO CITY — IN trying times like these, when the anguish and uncertainty can be almost too much to bear, Mexico turns to him, its philosopher-fanatic, to make sense of the seemingly nonsensical.
With the nation's hopes for the World Cup spiraling into doubt and chaos, Juan Villoro, one of Mexico's most decorated and esteemed writers — who also happens to be a leading soccer analyst — comes charging down the metaphorical field to scold, explain and extract the lessons within.
Mexico may miss the World Cup for the first time in 24 years, a crushing possibility in a country that treats the game like a religion. But this month, the Americans — of all people, the Americans! — saved Mexico's chances of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup by knocking out Panama, setting up a last-chance playoff next month.
After this sudden gift, from a superpower Mexico has long felt is its inferior on the soccer field, Mr. Villoro, 57, took to the front page of Reforma, one of the leading newspapers here, to wax apoplectic. "Crimes can be redeemed, but nothing saves you from mediocrity," he wrote.
Something about Mexico's struggle, and the prospect of doom, seems to fit the general sense of fatalism often manifested here.
"Every World Cup team reflects its country's social model," he said a few days after the column. "When Spain won last time, it was about middle-class aspiration, a nation making it. France's victorious team before that," in 1998, "reflected the multinational ideal it aspires to be."
"And Mexico now," he said, "it's a combination of the nation that has been promised a lot, but the promises have not been fully fulfilled and there is a feeling like maybe they never will be. It is a very Mexican team in that regard."
Many people watching a soccer game may see a bunch of players trying to kick a ball into a net. For 90 minutes.
"You could have a 0-0 tie, and everyone would be talking about what a wonderful game it was," said Mr. Villoro, speaking in a cantina with a closely watched match on the big-screen television that 90 minutes later, it so happened, ended up tied 1-1.
But this match, between Cruz Azul and América, two of the most popular clubs here, was not so wonderful. A cloudburst had soaked the field. The play was erratic.
Instead, Mr. Villoro saw something else, a metaphor for society, as he does in the regular columns, television appearances and writings that have made him such a pre-eminent figure in the church of soccer here, including a book called "God Is Round."
"Soccer has much less to do with sporting triumphs than with the desire to form an emotional community," he said after the game, reflecting on the coming-together around pivotal matches, in the way the Super Bowl in the United States borders on a holiday. "For that reason, I wrote in 'God Is Round' that if there were a World Cup of spectators, Mexico could get to the final. We celebrate the game, but above all we celebrate ourselves."
Celebration is not the national mood these days around Mexico's national team, which is stumbling through the World Cup qualifying matches like an exhausted player with little left but blind luck to pull it through.
A quirk in the tournament point system meant that the United States soccer team's defeat of Panama last week kept alive Mexico's hopes, even though it lost on that same night to Costa Rica. Unless it wins a playoff with New Zealand next month, Mexico will be ousted.
WITH the overwhelming demand for soccer commentary lately, it may be easy to overlook Mr. Villoro's prolific career of letters. It includes journalism, essays, short stories, children's literature, novels and even a few rock songs, dissecting and mulling contemporary and historical Mexico, often with a darkly reflective eye. In one of his better-known works, "The Witness," the protagonist returns to Mexico after its 2000 elections heralded a return to democracy to find a country slipping into social disintegration and disorder.
But he has also been a lifelong soccer fanatic, having even played briefly and unspectacularly for his college team.
None other than Carlos Fuentes, a god in Mexican letters whom Mr. Villoro admires and is sometimes compared to, once told an interviewer asking him about soccer, "If you want to talk about soccer, go talk to Juan Villoro."
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