The Little Country That Could Wonders if It Still Can
The New York Times
No South American nation has performed as well as Uruguay over the past three World Cups. Now the country’s three million people wonder if the good times might be over.
Luis Suárez arrived first. And in the ordinary run of things, for a city like Salto — a sleepy place tucked into a distant corner of a tiny country — that would have been its claim to fame: producing one of the finest strikers of a generation. Except that, precisely three weeks later, a second arrived.
Edinson Cavani grew up only a few streets from Suárez. The curiosity that the two players who would, for more than a decade, help turn Uruguay’s national team into one of the most potent in the world were born in such quick succession, in such proximity, lends their origin story a faintly fantastical gleam. Lightning, after all, is not supposed to strike twice.
If it feels like sheer coincidence, the sort of thing that could not — would not — happen again, that is not quite how they see it in Salto, Uruguay.
