hala madrid

i don’t care about the debates right now. about who declined first, who should’ve left earlier, who was a good captain, who wasn’t perfect. none of that feels important today. what matters is that a golden era, a truly generational era of this club, is officially gone now.

i always dreaded the day this picture would stop being a picture of our present and become only a picture of memory.

because football gives you so much joy, so many beautiful moments, but it also gives you heartbreak. and a huge part of that heartbreak is farewell. they are never easy. especially when the player leaving carries such a big part of what made the club feel so special in the first place.

dani carvajal was not perfect. neither were the others in this photo. but one thing all of them did was love real madrid genuinely, deeply and truly. and real madrid loved them back.

real madrid is many things to me. but one of the biggest is that it is my childhood. and so are these players. so now, for the first time, it truly feels like my childhood has come to an end too.

i’m excited for the new era, even if its beginning has not been smooth. i want to fall in love with this team all over again. but the emotions tied to the era before it, those will be impossible to replace. some things are simply too special to ever recreate in the same way.

i just hope every era that comes next is never less unforgettable than the one before, for all the happy reasons.