Manhattan Under A Grey Shroud

A remarkable day in NY

This was a day spent between Montclair in New Jersey where Spain trained and the northern part of Manhattan where Spain will turn up to hold their Press conference on Friday afternoon.

Training was routine, only a short period of access for the media but I’ll give you an alternative view on things. On Tuesday night, behind the scenes, where no other media were present, I watched Lamine Yamal really hobble out of the Dallas stadium. He was sore, the limp was very patent and that night I genuinely began to worry for the likelihood of him participating on Sunday afternoon.

This morning, in the hotel, he was patently moving better and while the Spain media we’re understandably worried to see him sitting out the public part of training at the Red Bull NY facility, what I saw was a 19 year-old genius who is looking a lot more like he’ll be available to his coach for the World Cup final against Argentina. I damn well hope so.

Anyway, it was onwards to the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York to try and locate an interview area for Friday afternoon when we will have the chance to speak to Spain captain Rodrigo Hernandez.

Two things stood out from the experience. First of all the Fan Fanatic Arena where there is the football equivalent of ComicCon taking place was mayhem. Absolutely hoatching with people, big brands everywhere, noise level to drive you crazy, and further evidence of the way in which every droplet of juice is being squeezed out of our sport commercially. The second thing was more grave. New York was covered in a gigantic dimming grey shroud. At first I couldn’t work out what was going on – I actually thought it was fog or smog or low lying cloud.

Instead, it’s smoke drifting south from the incredible fires in Canada. How hellish, how damaging it must be up there for this amount of smoke to drift this far south – to the extent that Chicago had to postpone their match tonight because of the poor air quality.

I’m no expert, so I won’t speculate upon whether the staging of the final on Sunday is under any threat but I’m glad that it wasn’t meant to be today because many New Yorkers were getting about wearing masks and it was clear that, even for those who are a little bit frail in their lungs, the quality of the air was a threat.

Given how vastly important breathing well and clearing loads of oxygen through their body is for high level elite athletes it really doesn’t bear thinking about that conditions might be as bad as this in a few days time when the biggest event in sport takes place.

But the most important thing is how Canada is coping, how people who are affected by the fires up there are kept safe and how the attempts to limit the damage are successful. That’s the real world.

Anyway our job was done we fought through the teatime traffic in the Big Apple – a 30 minute journey became a 90 minute journey. Ho hum. That’s life.

And it all starts again on Friday. I’m really looking forward to speaking to Rodri – no matter the fact that it will be a short interview. He’s extremely bright, media savvy, clever talking about the game and an increasingly imposing presence in this World Cup. If Spain win on Sunday, which I expect them to, it would not surprise me at all if Rodri picked up the golden boot for best player.

Anyway, it’s late at night here …it’s time to say adiós, hasta mañana. Thanks for being with Revista.