ODE TO CANIGGIA

The reason your name doesn't gong more eternal
in the Adirondacks and Denali of 90 minutes play
is because you wore the colors that suited
you when you needed them to matter and the fans
don't have that option. If their hearts bleed blue
and gold then they had you on lock when you were
busy peeling out in the Bombonera, but you were
also very prodigious playing for the Plate? Shit,
you've even played for the Rangers in Glasgow and
the rabid sheiks that run the Qatar Sports Club.
In other words, it is as if you've been Maradonized.
As if Maradona had come down from on high and clipped
those little wingtips of prolonged celebrity quotient.
I mean, Caniggia, had it in spades. It being a dollop
of the demi-god, a reverence reserved for the prettiest
Aryans, those model fucks with luxurious hair bounties.
My man could glide with quickness, I think some Peronists
probably timed him silly in the barn of some futbol club
and the news spread like unmitigated flu purloin. Maybe he
could sprint 100 meters in under 11 seconds, but how much faster
could he go if the sins of Father Maradona were not some
unforeseen dumbbell, some aggregate riposte on the albatross.
Caniggia was possibly the last albatross in the land
where the toilets flush backwards. An ass, no doubt, but
at the same time, he is a manner of the celeste and white
that typifies the Argentine national team. But back to the
bird metaphors, let's just say that Caniggia was largely
believed to be the fastest white soccer player playing in
the world and to watch the clips you would think that
there is no way a man's stride could cut so much distance
could mow down the green continent spread out before him.
Caniggia could run fast, like wow, because he was a stringy
and tall god-like motherfucker that could run like an animal.