Andres Cantor

Maybe years ago, like a couple decades, Andrés Cantor was something of a cartoon to non-soccer fans with his outsized “GOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

We also don’t like to emote in the way Argentinians do, as sometimes it feels all of them could start a fight and a party simultaneously in an empty room. A fandom of the women’s team has a feel of revolution about it, of being part of a movement, of a fight that still has so long to go. Thirty-six years between triumphs makes it feel epic, when in fact it’s equivalent to just nine years in a club season. Sure, the heartbreak of the repeated failures builds in a different way, but there’s something worse about having to sit on a World Cup exit for four years. It’s a huge part of it. Sometimes I think it’s just a different form of a club team, not really all that different from my affinity for Liverpool. And I suppose, or maybe just hope, that I’m not the only one who watched this video with just a tinge of jealousy. But it’s also kind of business as usual. While getting to call a World Cup final is the profession’s highest calling, and getting to call yesterday’s must have seemed like being given a gift from the lord himself, it clearly was something even more to Cantor, however possible that is. The men’s team kind of used to have that back in the day, though it was just more of a punk rock support of something that wasn’t popular among the masses more than an actual political thing. Cantor’s famous goal calls, to those in the know, have always capped off the singular moment that a goal in soccer is, and one of the very biggest reasons we watch. As the sport’s popularity has skyrocketed, Cantor has become something of a beacon for fans.