the global free range meat and poultry industry is worth an estimated one-hundred and thirty one billion united states dollars. this means that, annually, the global populace spends more money on easing their post-vegan-documentary guilt than there is money in the nation of hungary.
in 1999 — and in every other recorded year in human history — that number was zero.
see, before the usda became so thoroughly captured by the industry it was supposed to regulate that it began certifying penned-up, steroid-riddled, cluckless chickens as free-range, as if they were actually free to roam in some vast missouri ranchⅠ, any and every regular chicken was, by all definitions, a free-range one.
1970s football was, in our view, the purest version of the game. where a winger's entire oeuvre consisted of beating his man and putting in a mean cross or, if you were really good, the ball in the back of the net.
rené houseman existed long before the average winger spent their playing career being triple-marked on the touchline. houseman ran freely before the game put a premium on it. this man was no quote-unquote "free-range chicken", but a rooster of great wattle, scurrying in all hullabaloos across open plain. clucking, even.
houseman's nom de guerre "el loco" perfectly epitomized his ability to make parallel lines feel like they're dancing and still keep the geometry of it all intact. rené somehow found a way to be efficient but also overdecorated in his movement.
even in his downward years at river plate and colo colo, you could watch him flick the ball over his man at the halfway line and drive at full speed, conjuring the inevitable feeling that something ridiculous was about to happen.
watch him against newell's in the late 70s, in a broadcast so grainy it will force a great deal of exercise out of your eyelids. yet when he gets in the box and shows the defender outside then flashing in to his left, gives another defender with the same diagnosis the same treatment, lines up his shot, and blasts it into the top corner — everything looks so clear.
it's enthralling the way he makes defenders commit to an answer he hasn't asked a question for. how he slows down and practically gifts the ball to them before vanishing with just two touches. rené houseman is what happens when you take the scenic route at 30 over the speed limit.
cesar miño has no highway, nor does he have a scenic route. the game has only given miño the little stone alleyways in serpentine backcountry of old, and he has somehow found a way to speed through them; all too houseman-ly.
miño dribbles between spaces like they're a bunch of office chairs, making cleats swivel and crash into each other like they're in a jumbled cubicle. cesar puts his studs on the ball and shifts through a squadron of opponents on the touchline untouched and unseen. his footwork is unmatched in precision, he runs daintily at speeds only reserved for crudity.
the paraguayan also possesses a dangerous left foot that can either toss a poisonous inswinger into the box or curl it into any corner he likes.
rené houseman was intricacy when the game allowed for directness, there was nobody in front of him that wasn't invited there just to be disposed of. cesar miño is the opposite. the game is compact, and it's plugged up by all sorts of airtight systems.
miño doesn't have the luxury of receiving the ball in space and then making a play, he is expected to make two plays to get himself in a position where he could even fathom making a play. the game is now designed to suffocate their type of magic, but cesar miño is breathing it into life.
watch him receive the ball on the touchline and, in a breath, cruyff turn the ball with his left foot and simultaneously keep it in bounds and get past his man with the outside of his right.
watching miño for 90 minutes is like watching someone solve an escape room that's perpetually in motion. he is an amalgam of bravado and productivity that we had only ever seen running down the same wing in albiceleste almost 50 years ago.
in the free-rangeⅡ world, miño is reminding us the great-wattled roosters are not extinct just yet. on a highway, on a backroad, in a maze, players of this caliber will live all the same.
rené houseman showed us magic out in the open, a talisman of long, flared out touches across the right flank. but what the game doesn't know is that it doesn't matter how hard you squeeze magic, it'll stay alive all the same. cesar miño is the living proof.
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