You are eighteen, you have just won La Liga, you have tens of millions of followers, and you have celebrated however you saw fit. I believe you have every right. Congratulations! We have also watched the world quarrel about you these last hours, and the quarrel itself is what nobody is helping you understand. Before some defend you and others accuse you, allow me to urge you toward something that could solidify your image beyond the athletic realm, something that will take you to another level as a person and as a thinking human being.

Very well. You raised a flag on that open-top bus. Somebody handed it to you in the middle of the parade, in the most euphoric afternoon of your young life. You smiled, you held it up against the wind, and the cameras caught everything. The video crossed continents before the buses had reached the stadium. Within a day, Israel’s Defense Minister had named you personally and accused you of inciting hatred. The press divided into the two armies it always divides into, and you, the boy with the magical feet, became a matter of State before the champagne had dried.

That is the price one pays for being so famous. Everything you say and everything you do will generate a reaction proportional to the magnitude of your fame. Now then, did you know what you were really doing? I ask because you are almost an adult and you are world-famous. Loved by many, hated by others, but surely respected by all for your football, for your game, and for the success you have managed to achieve in so few years.

But, given that you are barely eighteen, have not yet been to university, and no one holds that against you at your age, do you really believe you have the knowledge and the intellectual capacity to step into those political controversies simply by waving a flag that represents so much to so many people in the middle of a celebration, and to come out unscathed at your young age?

The excuse that you are only a teenager and that you do not understand what you are doing is no longer valid at this point. If Israel’s Defense Minister condemned your action, it is because he believes you had the age to understand perfectly what you were doing, but it is fair to ask you: what is it that you know or understand about the conflict in the Middle East that has the world so polarized? Have you studied the subject in depth? If you have not, with what aim did you do what you did? To gain followers? To incite hatred toward the Jews? Or did you simply let yourself be carried away by social media propaganda? I ask because at your age I understood nothing about a conflict that has existed for so many decades.

A few years ago you were probably still carrying a lunchbox to school. Regardless of the position a person may hold on the matter, it is not an easy subject to understand. One must be self-taught and study a great deal about it.

The thing is, the world is used to seeing footballers as people who entertain us with their game, but not as people who can politically influence the public, especially because among the conglomerate of fans of footballers there will be some who hold one political stance and others who hold a radically opposite one.

But, obviously, every athlete has the right to hold his own political position and also to express it. What you must understand is that the voice of a football star can have a reach and an impact that is difficult to measure. Could you be one of the first in this regard? Of course! Why not? But not in that way. Not in the way where you are only using your fame and current success as a footballer, without using the most specialized cortical functions of your brain.

Anyone can wave a........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)