Altagracia McDonald

[J. Antonio Zancarrón ۞ @JAZancarron]

En 2018 hace 8 años la campaña de socios del Real Betis Balompié tuvo como protagonistas a la futura mamá de un Campeón del Mundo, Chari Peña, trabajadora del club y al hoy Campeón del Mundo, Fabián Ruiz Peña, jugador de la cantera del club.

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@ClayTravis Whaaat?!??! Sooooo clueless

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@Tumama13874661 @iamsangushi @AlvaroNCG Got it!!! 👍🏽

[Ankor Inclán @ankorinclan]

Fabián Ruiz se cruzaba con su madre en los pasillos del Betis. Ella limpiaba. Él entrenaba. Los dos sabían lo que significaba estar ahí.

Fabián Ruiz Peña nació en Los Palacios y Villafranca, un pueblo de Sevilla de 40.000 habitantes. Sus padres se separaron cuando él era pequeño y su madre, Chari, sacó adelante a tres hijos sola. Cuando el Betis lo fichó para su cantera, el club ofreció a su madre un trabajo fijo como limpiadora en las instalaciones como parte del acuerdo. Chari aceptó. Era un empleo estable, seguro, suficiente.

Lo que nadie calculó fue el momento en que los dos coincidieran en los mismos pasillos. Fabián admitió años después que en aquellos años sentía una mezcla de vergüenza y orgullo al cruzarse con su madre fregando los suelos donde él soñaba con llegar a ser futbolista profesional. Vergüenza de adolescente, la que se pasa. Orgullo de toda la vida.
Chari se graduó en Psicología mientras Fabián subía por las categorías del Betis, llegaba al Napoli, volvía a España con el PSG y se convertía en pieza indiscutible de la selección española. El hombre que España no ha perdido ni un partido en los 49 partidos que ha jugado con la Roja. El mediocentro que marcó el gol que nos metió en semifinales del Mundial.

Ella estudió. Él jugó. Los dos llegaron.

¿Cuántas madres hay detrás de cada futbolista que levanta un trofeo, y cuántas veces las vemos?

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@BuckSexton Dear Buck, it looks most of your followers are not soccer fans and consequently didn’t get your point. However, your point is well taken and understood by everyone else who does follow soccer internationally. The world headlines today read “Spain saved football”. In deed they did

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@RodGozenya @BuckSexton Wrong way to look at the game.

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@2aLabe @BuckSexton It’s hard to explain it if you don’t follow soccer- it’s a build up from last World Cup- and no “big dog” teams are not hated in soccer but revered - like Brazil, Germany, they’re respected and admired by for and friend alike. It’s the way the compete.

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@Il_Consigliere @BuckSexton He absolutely got it. Argentina’s game last night was an absolute disgrace. The whole world of soccer no politics is over joyed that the good guys won.

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@BuckSexton Poor showing and poor sportsmanship through out. Spain was the better team. They played with tempo and class and they ultimately won.

[Daniel Abrahams @DanAbrahams77]

Spain are Men’s World Champions again…comfortably cementing themselves as the powerhouse of world football in the men’s and women’s games.

“They think the game…”
“They create teams…not individuals…”
“They go for the player who understands space…”

Several years ago, Thierry Henry was asked to comment on the success of Spanish football.

“They think the game. They think 1, 2, 3 steps ahead. They don’t just receive the ball and start to think. They’re team players..”

But let’s be clear (and I want to do so whilst appreciating that Monsieur Henry has forgotten more about football than I will ever know)…the ‘thinking’ happens as a consequence of:

-attention
-knowledge (understanding)

Spanish players pay attention. They are constantly focused and connected to the game through their scanning and searching. In many respects, ‘search behaviours’ are the behavioural expression of attention in team sports. Their attention is biased towards opposition, teammates, space, and ball through the understanding that football is a game of interactions as much (or more so) than it is about actions.

And so, in every activity in every session every day, Spanish players attune to, and familiarise themselves with, the ever-changing relationships that appear and disappear across the pitch. They see connections; they pay close attention to those connections; and they build a library of pictures that illuminate in-action connections they can draw on at any given moment.

Attention + understanding = knowledge-in the game

And so the thinking - the slow-thought decision-making when there’s a little more time; and the quick-thought decisions when there’s hardly any time - happen as a result of thousands of hours of attention to connections that build game understanding. The understanding of self with relation to teammates, opposition, ball, and space…

That, in part, is the formula that helps them play several steps ahead of the rest of the world…

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@AlexEstebanDC Son el campeonato femenil también

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@lebrazill The Americas were Not colonies of Spain. We were virreinatos. Cortez married Malinche, the surviving memebers of the royal family of Moctezuma were given the noble title of Duke of Tultengo and his descendants still live in Spain. We are family with a complicated history.

[Herod Priovolos @herodpriovolos]

Dear Christopher Nolan,
My name is Herod Priovolos and I want to tell you what #TheOdyssey truly means to me and to generations of Greeks who grew up with Homer’s story.
Homer did not sing of Odysseus simply to entertain us with ships, storms, gods and monsters. He told the story because he understood what war, time, distance and loss can do to the human soul.
Odysseus leaves Ithaca as a king, a husband and a father. He returns twenty years later alone, exhausted and disguised as a beggar, carrying the memory of every companion who never made it home.
The monsters are not merely creatures created for spectacle.
The Cyclops is power without justice. The Sirens are the beautiful voices that tempt a person to abandon their purpose. Circe represents the danger of losing our humanity. Calypso offers Odysseus immortality, but even eternal life becomes a prison when the price is forgetting his wife, his son, his homeland and his own identity.
And Ithaca is not merely an island.
Ithaca is the place that remembers you when the world no longer recognizes your face. It is the home that remains alive inside you after everything else has been taken away. It is Penelope growing older while she waits. It is Telemachus becoming a man without his father. It is Argos surviving long enough to recognize his master one final time.
Odysseus is not great simply because he defeats monsters. He is great because he is proud, frightened, wounded, clever, imperfect and deeply human. He loses his companions, his youth, his name and twenty years of his life, yet he refuses to forget who he is.
When he finally returns, Penelope does not recognize him through strength, glory or appearance. She tests him. Odysseus proves his identity by remembering the bed they built together around the roots of a living olive tree.
That is the heart of The Odyssey.
Not the battles.
Not the ships.
Not the monsters.
Two people standing before each other after twenty years, asking whether love, memory and identity can survive everything time has done to them.
That is why this poem has survived for almost 3,000 years. Every human being is trying to return to something: a home, a person, a lost part of themselves, or the life they had before the world changed them.
So use Homer’s seas, gods, heroes and monsters. But please understand what you are touching.
The Odyssey was never truly about how far a man could travel.
It was about how much the world could take from him before he stopped being himself, and whether, after losing almost everything, he could still find his way home.

[Maria Ponte @mariaponte3]

Así es la impresión que se llevan los periodistas de Venezuela.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

President Trump should absolutely give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Amish for their amazing work rebuilding Western North Carolina.

They have rebuilt hundreds of bridges, homes, businesses, and roads... and are STILL HERE!!!

No single group deserves it more.

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@_mungai23_ @potoki_d This is NOT how “green card” interviews go. This is NOT a citizenship interview.

[Altagracia McDonald @titamcd777]

@potoki_d This is not a citizenship interview- it looks more like a green card interview.