Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In November 2001, Ecuador qualified for the football World Cup for the first time. The country was then emerging from crisis: inflation had risen to 96 per cent at the turn of the millennium, the sucre currency had been abandoned in favour of the dollar, and a military coup had deposed the previous president. Even the national team’s Colombian coach, Hernán Darío Gómez, briefly resigned from his position after being shot in the leg, allegedly after not selecting a former president’s son for the youth team.Yet football was also a source of great solace. Gómez returned and, securing qualification with a 1-1 draw against Uruguay, the country forgot its woes. “Before, we had economic, social and political struggles,” said goalkeeper José Cevallos. “But every game that Ecuador has played that made a forward step to qualifying has brought the country together.”It is on this field of hope and fear that narrative-adventure game Despelote plays out. It opens to a retro game-within-a-game called Soccer ’99. As you struggle through a blocky black and white bout between Ecuador and Peru, two voices begin to speak Spanish in the background: parents, wanting to encourage their football-mad eight-year-old son Julián in his hobby, but suspecting he has just been swept up like the rest of the country in World Cup fever.Slowly the camera zooms out to show the TV you’re playing on, then a blurry wall and bookshelves, then two hands hammering away at a controller. You are Julián. Your parents switch off the game to catch the dying moments of the World Cup qualifying match between Peru and Ecuador, just as Agustín Delgado scores a 90th-minute winner. Despelote is the story of the sporting obsession that follows.And it is, by and large, a story. Gameplay doesn’t extend much beyond dribbling a football through the streets of Quito, which are presented in an evocatively pixelated, two-tone aesthetic. There are never any explicit instructions, objectives or opportunities to fail — just fragments of footballing memories to be experienced in your own time.Beyond the World Cup, it is the story of the erosion of carefree childhood ignorance. The adults you encounter spend their days complaining about work, politics and relationships. Their effect is to burst the football-shaped bubble around you and herald the arrival of adolescence.Despelote is a beautifully bittersweet tribute to a coming-of-age experienced both by a boy and an entire country. At the end of each scene, the screen slowly blurs out, as though a memory has come to a close — or Julián is stitching together bits of different ones. One of the game’s creators, Quito-born Julián Cordero, admits in a voiceover that he was five, not eight, that summer, and that he doesn’t remember it as well as he would like.In one sequence the colour suddenly changes. Gone is the dusty ochre and purple — everything is now green. It’s just you and a black and white football on a large grassy pitch. The horizon is hazy, and even the goalposts are green and overgrown. Every time you boot the ball, it flies off with a “whoosh” sound that makes it feel like a divine event. Perhaps it is, because another ball immediately comes flying down from the sky. Ambient keyboard music loops in the background. Everything seems infinite.Except it isn’t. Because while you’ve been staring at your feet, perfecting your stepovers, your surroundings have changed. The goal has vanished, the sky has darkened, and vast apartment blocks have sprung up around you. Time has encroached on your innocent daydream. “You have to accept that you’re no longer children,” a coach tells an older you as you head out to practise. “You’re all young people now.”Ecuador did not win the 2002 World Cup. They didn’t even make it out of the group stage. But for a short time, football was all that mattered. And in the brief time that it will take you to complete Despelote, it’s all that will matter to you too.★★★★★‘Despelote’ is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch
