Am I 9 years-old again? Should I feel this way?

It's 2 AM at home in Buenos Aires. With the time difference, Barcelona-Arsenal started at 3:45 PM, so it's been almost 10 hours after the final whistle was barely heard amongst the crazy chants the Camp Nou was giving MESSI.

After a quick first-impression post, I spent most of the day thinking: "There must be more I should write about what happened!"

And there is plenty. Many angles you can take to approach the subject. My pick?

Well...tonight on cable TV in Argentina, they showed the first episode of 'V', the remake of that almost mythological series about aliens that was aired in the 80's, when I was a boy.

I wasn't paying much attention, but I knew it was on as my wife (incidentally called Diana, like the main character in the original series -they changed the name to 'Anna' in the new one-) was watching .

So I asked her: "Is this better or worse than the original?".

Her reply was what prompted this post. "You know what?" she said, "How can this new stuff compete with what I saw when I was a 9 year-old girl and my imagination was all over the place?"

She had to say '9 years-old'! Did she? Because that was my age when Diego, who just like Diana (both Dianas if you ask me), came from another planet and triggered every possible emotion my young mind could experience back then.

"It won't be better than the original" she concluded, "and I don't want it to be better".

Which generated another thought and another comparison: "Do I want this new coming to be better than the one I witnessed more than 20 years ago?"

I didn't need much time to get to the conclusion that I may be one of the few Argentines of my generation that would answer with a big fat 'YES' to that question.

In a way, I am a romantic when it comes to my football. I won't blush when I say football was better when I was boy (in most aspects. And I'm open to debate if you think I'm wrong, but let's leave it for another time). I know for a fact that nobody will get to me the way Diego did when I was a little boy. I wasn't all that judgemental back then and I was all emotion, all instinct. But back then it was easier to win over me.

My answer is 'YES' because the love I've got for the Albiceleste is bigger than the love I've got for Diego (again, I won't blush) and, opposite to what a lot of Argentines that were born around the same time I was born (late 70's), I'm ready to embrace MESSI without giving him a funny look.

I'm ready to let myself go and enjoy him without much analysis. Without much dissecting team tactics, rivals, level of competition and all the variables you like.

I want this new alien to entertain me like he's been entertaining me since the day I first saw him.

I'm not that easy to win over these days, but I've got to admit that I'm getting some flashes of the time in which my very young mind was full of dreams. Lionel MESSI is feeding my imagination and it's been more time than I can remember since I last felt that way and just like that David BOWIE song, I'm 'believing the strangest things. Loving the alien'.