Diego Maradona: Immortal Footballer, Mortal Man
Diego Armando Maradona ranks among the most beautiful practitioners of the beautiful game.
On what would have been his 63rd birthday, the Sports Gazette celebrates the life and career of an Argentine who dazzled and divided.
The magnitude of Maradona’s footballing talent was matched only by the excess of his personality. When it came to Diego, there was no place for impartiality – it was reverence and rage, and often both.
Through three mementos, the Sports Gazette traces the story of a career that mythologised itself in real-time, passing from one monumental moment to the next.
‘Live is Life:’ Maradona in Naples
Berlin’s Olympiastadion, April 19th 1989. Tension fills the air as Bayern Munich prepare to face Napoli in the second leg of the UEFA Cup semi-final.
Just not the air that Maradona breathes.
The Argentine is a picture of calm, bouncing around to Opus’ Live is Life in a pair of untied Pumas.
A ball is soon added to his jive, juggled from knee-to-knee and shoulder-to-shoulder to the Austrian Band’s tempo.
“What Zidane could do with a ball, Maradona could do with an orange,” says Michel Platini.
No one did a warm-up like Diego Maradona.
(via @boxtoboxfootbal)pic.twitter.com/OWUFKSNZCc
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) November 25, 2020
Napoli would advance to the final and defeat Stuttgart 5-4 across two legs, marking the climax of Maradona’s Neapolitan romance.
Reflecting in his autobiography El Diego, Maradona writes, “I had stamped Napoli’s name on Europe.
“I brought them pride. Pride, because before I arrived nobody wanted anything to do with Naples, they were afraid.”
Diego had arrived at Napoli in 1984 and quickly connected with the fanbase.
Poverty-stricken and maligned, Naples spoke to Maradona’s upbringing and his own sense of embattlement. “I want to become the idol of the poor children of Naples, because they are like I was when I lived in Buenos Aires,” he said during his presentation.
One lucky Neapolitan now lives in Maradona’s head
His talent utterly transformed a Napoli side who had evaded relegation by one point in 1983.
Napoli’s first scudetto in sixty years came in 1987, with Maradona the top scorer across Serie A. He remembers this triumph fondly in El Diego.
“The Scudetto belonged to the whole city, and the people began to realise there was no reason to be afraid: that it’s not the one with the most money who wins but the one who fights the most, who wants it the most.”
However, the romance faded in his final years at the club. A failed drug test in March 1991 led to a fifteen-month suspension and he departed for Sevilla the following year.
“I was pushed out of Italy like a delinquent. And that’s no way to end the story, definitely not.”
Thankfully, the story has a happier ending.
The San Paolo stadium became the Diego Armando Maradona stadium in December 2020. In truth, it had always been Diego’s.
After Maradona’s death in November 2020, lifelong Napoli supporter Giuseppe Nappo captured the feeling in the city.
“When I was young the city was only known for the Camorra [mafia] and crime. He gave us a new identity, and made the world see that Naples was worth something.”
The Hand of God and the Goal of the Century
They love Maradona in Naples, but they worship him in Argentina.
Maradona celebrates his 1986 World Cup triumph
Diego was the confluence of two Argentine footballing ideals: invention and ingenuity on the one hand, and guile on the other.
Both were on display as Argentina took on England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final. Football was not the only thing at stake in Mexico’s Estadio Azteca – this was a contest charged with the politics of the Falkland’s War.
Just ask Maradona. Reflecting on the 2-1 win in El Diego, he writes “It was like recovering a bit of the Malvinas.”
Literally single-handedly, Maradona won them the game. Even better, he won it by being Argentine.
The first of his brace was teeming with Machiavellian cunning. ‘The Hand of God’ – Diego’s clenched fist – gave Argentina a 51st minute lead.
“Bollocks was it the hand of God, it was the hand of Diego!” he writes in El Diego
But rage turned to reverence just four minutes later.
If Diego had the hand of a god, he had the feet of something greater. Eleven touches in eleven seconds took him beyond four English defenders and then Peter Shilton to net the goal of the century.
In the case of this footballing deity, seeing really is believing.
Diego Maradona’s “Goal Of The Century” vs England.
FIFA World Cup, 1986 pic.twitter.com/0LZiz0C1s9— Raghu (@IndiaTales7) December 8, 2022
Victor Hugo Morales of Radio Argentina found time for some eloquence after a lengthy exclamation of ‘Gol!’
“Cosmic kite! What planet are you from, to leave in your wake so many Englishmen, so that the whole country is a clenched fist shouting for Argentina?”
This was Diego’s paradox. His actions told you he was mortal. His talent convinced you that he was something more.
Maradona in Mexico
Maradona returns to Mexico in 2018. He is managing second-division side Dorados de Sinaloa in the country where he once claimed World Cup glory.
Maradona had not lost his knack for crowd-pleasing
Watching-on through Netflix’s docuseries, we see a Diego that is largely unchanged. His passion is infectious, but his erraticism is jarring.
Dorados make the promotion play-off final against all odds, but Maradona must watch from the dressing room after being sent off. “Here comes the Diego Maradona show,” declares the commentator as Diego’s spat with the referee intensifies.
A suspended Maradona watched Dorados’ playoff dream crushed from the stands in the second leg
Although, this is a more sombre Diego. “I always wonder what player I could have been if I hadn’t taken drugs,” he confesses in episode one.
This portrait of his later years assures that Maradona neither lived nor died without regret.
He was an immortal footballer, but a mortal man, and Diego was amongst those who found that difficult to accept.
