Is there a connection between Viggo Mortensen the rabid San Lorenzo, Montreal Canadiens, New York Giants, and New York Mets fan, and Viggo Mortensen the actor, composer, photographer, poet?
I don’t know. I enjoy the drama of sports. I think the basic ingredients of any good drama have to do with relatively ordinary people being faced with extraordinary circumstances. How do characters act when everything goes wrong? How do they deal with stress, humiliation, injury, death, suffering, separation, and war? I see that in sports. I see people playing hurt, or playing hard even if they know they have no chance to win. Do you watch soccer?
A bit.
Well, there’s a real character whom I loathe but find entertaining — José Mourinho, the coach of Chelsea. I like Real Madrid, and when Mourinho coached them, he basically destroyed the team psychologically. The damage he did to the fan base and the whole structure of the club will last for a while. He was playing a match two days ago in the Champions League
against Paris Saint-Germain. It was the return match, and Chelsea had the advantage of an away goal in their first match, and it was unlikely that things were going to go well for Paris. Then partway through the first half, Paris unfairly had a player thrown out. So they were playing 10 against 11. Chelsea should have creamed them. But it ended up being an epic 120 minutes, with comeback after comeback, and even though Paris was playing with a numerical disadvantage, they kept playing really beautiful, pure football, and Chelsea was just playing not to lose. In the last minutes of regulation time, Paris tied it up, and in the last minutes of extra time, they tied it again. Since they had two away goals compared to the one away goal Chelsea had, Paris went through. It was great, dramatic. It was almost like watching a movie.
