Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s 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\u2019s Colombian coach, Hern\u00e1n Dar\u00edo G\u00f3mez, briefly resigned from his position after being shot in the leg, allegedly after not selecting a former president\u2019s son for the youth team.Yet football was also a source of great solace. G\u00f3mez returned and, securing qualification with a 1-1 draw against Uruguay, the country forgot its woes. \u201cBefore, we had economic, social and political struggles,\u201d said goalkeeper Jos\u00e9 Cevallos. \u201cBut every game that Ecuador has played that made a forward step to qualifying has brought the country together.\u201dIt 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 \u201999. 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 Juli\u00e1n 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\u2019re playing on, then a blurry wall and bookshelves, then two hands hammering away at a controller. You are Juli\u00e1n. Your parents switch off the game to catch the dying moments of the World Cup qualifying match between Peru and Ecuador, just as Agust\u00edn 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\u2019t 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 \u2014 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 \u2014 or Juli\u00e1n is stitching together bits of different ones. One of the game\u2019s creators, Quito-born Juli\u00e1n Cordero, admits in a voiceover that he was five, not eight, that summer, and that he doesn\u2019t remember it as well as he would like.In one sequence the colour suddenly changes. Gone is the dusty ochre and purple \u2014 everything is now green. It\u2019s 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 \u201cwhoosh\u201d 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\u2019t. Because while you\u2019ve 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. \u201cYou have to accept that you\u2019re no longer children,\u201d a coach tells an older you as you head out to practise. \u201cYou\u2019re all young people now.\u201dEcuador did not win the 2002 World Cup. They didn\u2019t 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\u2019s all that will matter to you too.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2018Despelote\u2019 is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X\/S and Nintendo Switch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":301818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-301817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301819,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301817\/revisions\/301819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}