Get Out (2017) presents us with a dismaying question: is a mind a separate, distinct organism; completely exclusive of one's body? we believe it is. not in the racialist, macabre practices of the armitage family, but in a sense far removed from brain surgeries and transhumanism. we come to speak of football.
roberto ayala's body was not at all indicative of his brain power, not brain power in the sense of academia, but brain power in the sense of the energy it must take to produce such lunatically ambitious ideas. the argentinian was not blessed with a stalwart frame as were the colossal nestas and desaillys of his world, but god rather opted to give him something else entirely.
he gave him the quality to bite into the most irreducible of opportunities. the talent to see a hole where there is none and run through it. to live for scraps and somehow be a hoarder. this gave ayala an essence which later birthed his nickname, a nickname most rodent. el ratón.
much like a rat, ayala, at his weakest, was far removed from docile yet vulnerable to great degree. argentinian legend and one-term manager daniel passarella did him a great disservice in the '98 world cup. passarella was presumably living vicariously through ayala when he chose to strand him, old-world instinct intact, between his goalkeeper and his midfield in the aberrant 1-4-3-2. try that one on fifa.
this unique formation left ayala mano a mano with the verve-brimming michael owen, 19 years old full of pace and cunning and guile. once owen got daylight behind argentina's sturdy midfield he was like the flu the week before finals, very attractive and impossible to catch. within the half-hour mark, owen had managed to overbear the isolated ayala twice, once brought down for a penalty, once not brought down for a top-corner cracker.
despite argentina's eventual win on penalties, ayala's starry night was struck by owen's lightning.
mustn't we forget who propped up the mammals past meteoric extinction of old. the rodents. the scroungers.
ayala's rodentry was evident even from the moment his head was dug in a hole. there was something about the way he nibbled at space before everybody else did. blocked shots he shouldn't have even been near enough to see. headers won he shouldn't have been winning. a preemptive sprint away from the ball to tackle shearer just as he's first-timing the ball right outside the box. there was something about him that just…persisted.
superficially, jeyland mitchell is not alike ayala, in any traditional sense of the word. jeyland mitchell is large. jeyland mitchell is at the top of the food chain. jeyland mitchell is an orca.
watch him play and the word tame will be the last thing to cross your mind. mitchell will torpedo 30 yards forward to intercept a pass that has been all but completed and, despite a late arrival, still manage to loot the ball carrier of his, well, loot. whether it be through sheer, unadulterated power or quick-witted foresight of the attacker's movement, mitchell will be disposing of you.
this is a kid who effectively annulled both vini jr. and rodrygo at the age of 19. the performance wasn't one of rejecting dribbles through bellicose slide tackles, flinging vini into the air in flails and appeals. it wasn't even a case of mitchell being too close for the brazucas' comfort on every play and suffocating them to the point of the dreaded back pass.
there were no dribbles to be dribbled. there were no passes to be passed. the duo was scarcely able to feel the ball at their feet. and on the most scattered of off-chances they did, they felt mitchell's breath over their heads and his knees into their thighs. and so, the dreaded back pass.
watching this match it begins to spell out for you. you begin to see it. the way his legs get there before his body which gets there before the ball. you rewind and rewind to figure out how he was minutely out of frame on 32:14 and he wins a header on the touchline at 32:16. it doesn't make any sense. to you.
you see it. jeyland mitchell is what happens when a brain so clairvoyant meets a body that allows its wildest predictions to be somehow most tangible. this is a player who doesn't care if he's wrong. for all you or anybody else knows, he's right.
but he didn't invent his answers, somebody had built the blueprint long before him. in the 2004 uefa cup final, marseille's didier drogba attempted to come at ayala like something that shouldn't be stoppable. a searing block of horsepower, a problem designed specifically for men like him.
what the world didn't know is that the game wasn't what it was half a decade prior. there were no yawning openings in the middle third and there was certainly no passarella 1-4-3-2. the game had compacted, a sport of orifices and bottlenecks. the 90s were impossible to decode because of its unpredictability. once channels were more than just theories, and attackers ran with some form of repeatability, the game was suddenly all too predictable, and ayala did predicting.
he was alan turing in the second world war. what seemed to forever be radio static became sounds and then became words. el ratón was the first to understand.
it became all too clear when he faced drogba. the hefty ivorian mustered every piece of strength he had. but strength doesn't work when you have nowhere to put it, and ayala was everywhere except within reach. ayala knew he was weaker and so he played within his margins. he leads didier to believe they're having an aerial duel, when in reality his feet are flat on the ground. which leaves drogba's body bracing for an impact that isn't there. where else do you see a centre back put on a clinic without any collision?
ayala's genius came within his margins, and he put the world on notice. but the world has a problem. jeyland mitchell has no margins.
the armitages had it all wrong. you don't put a brain inside a body. you wait for the body to be built around it.
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