“And one day it happened. One day the inevitable happened. It is an emotional and national slap. A blow that reverberates in all latitudes. A worldwide impact. A news that marks a hinge in history. The sentence that was written several times but had been dribbled by fate is now the sad reality. Diego Armando Maradona died.” – Clarín
The 1986 World Cup was my introduction to the true magnificence of the world’s most popular sport. That it coincided with beautiful game’s most astounding talent dominating its greatest stage was my good fortune.
Diego Armando Maradona, who has died today aged 60, a date he shall now forever share with George Best (who died in 2005, aged 59) rivals Muhammad Ali, Jack Nicklaus and Ayrton Senna in the 20th Century’s sporting firmament. He elevated the game he loved and became known the world over through his astonishing albeit flawed genius.
“You know, all that happened was that was a team of Argentine footballers won a few matches,” he told World Soccer magazine’s Rino Landa in a December 1986 interview.
“No more. Football changes nothing. Life goes on for the people. The price of food stays the same. If going to play football in Mexico could change social conditions in the world then I would go and live there permanently! But a handful of matches do not answer everything. Not even in football.”
He was right. Unquestionably. However, no one player – not Ferenc Puskas in 1954, not Pele in 1958 or 70, not Johan Cruyff in 74 or Zinedine Zidane in 98 so singularly dominated a World Cup to the extent that Maradona did in Mexico ’86.
That his top-class career ended in turmoil on the brink of an Indian summer with Argentina at USA ’94 has been heavily documented, as were all the disappointments before and since. Irrespective of ‘La Mano de Dios’, the summer of 1986 shall forever be Maradona’s. And through his undeniable brilliance, ‘El Diego’ swept practically everyone - save English fans for one afternoon - along with him. The axis of the planet tilted to his will that month.
“It was like watching it on a mobile TV camera,” said team-mate Jorge Valdano of Maradona’s immortal second goal against England at the sun-baked Azteca Stadium.
“At first, I went along with him out of a sense of responsibility, but then I realised I was just one more spectator. I didn’t feel there was anything I could do. It was his goal and had nothing to do with the team. It was Diego’s personal adventure, one that was totally spectacular.”
Different class. You have to say that’s magnificent. All the superlatives apply to that goal, to that summer, to the little squat man who turned like an eel, came away from trouble and wove himself into the tapestry of the FIFA World Cup.
Wrote Brian Glanville of that remarkable moment: “It was a goal so unusual, almost romantic, that it might have been scored by some schoolboy hero, or some remote Corinthian, from the days when dribbling was the vogue. It hardly belonged to so apparently rational and rationalised an era as ours, to a period in football when the dribble seemed almost as extinct as the pterodactyl.”
Diego Maradona, just four minutes after producing an act of grand larceny on the world stage, painted his Picasso almost as quickly. The great contradiction of the greatest ever was never more spectacularly showcased. All inside four devastating minutes.
“With Maradona you have this guy who is God or the devil depending on your opinion,” said Asif Kapadia, director of the stunning and definitive documentary on Maradona. “He’s not in the middle, he’s extreme, and people like that cannot help but be interesting.”
Having exploded onto the scene as a 15-year-old, Maradona rarely escaped the whiff of cordite thereafter. He drew controversy into his life almost as magnetically as the ball he so regularly glued to his Puma Kings. He lived his life with eyes wide open to both the potential and the devastation that success brought to him.
“Soccer gave me everything I have, more than I ever imagined,” he told Argentinian newspaper Clarín in what ultimately proved his final interview. “And if I hadn’t had that addiction, I could have played a lot more.”
Remarkably, that final interview saw Maradona refrain on remarks he made to World Soccer 34 years previously.
“It makes me very sad when I see children who do not have enough to eat, I know what it is to go hungry, I know what it feels like to feel when you do not eat for several days and that cannot happen in my country. That is my wish, to see the Argentines happy, with work and eating every day.”
Maradona did what Pelé and Leo Messi (thus far at least) never did: he took his talent somewhere else and did the unthinkable.
In winning two Serie A titles, the Coppa Italia, Italian Super Cup and the UEFA Cup with Napoli, Maradona summited a mountain that no other pretenders to the greatest ever throne can lay claim to. To claim the Italian title less than a year after leading Argentina to the World Cup remains one of the great doubles in the game given his primacy in both teams.
That is not to say there was no talent elsewhere in either outfit, but without Maradona, it’s difficult to imagine either his country or club emerging victorious in either instance.
“In football there is always the next match, the next target,” he said in that World Soccer interview, less than six months before he led the club of many nicknames to its greatest ever domestic achievement.
“In my case it is to win the Italian Championship with Napoli. I dream of achieving that before I leave Italian football. I’m not saying we WILL win it. I am saying I desperately want to win it. I can’t win the league on my own. To do that takes a strong team with the right sort of spirit…We need to win something this season. The fans have been very patient but now we owe it to them.”
A prayer written on a wall in his adopted Italian city in April 1987 stated:
“Our Maradona, who takes the field, blessed be thy name,
Thy kingdom is Napoli, lead us not into disappointment
But deliver unto us the championship. Amen.”
Only weeks later, Maradona & Co answered that divinely intended request. El Diego has left this world far too early. But my goodness, what a mark he leaves.
Please visit https://www.clarin.com/deportes/murio-diego-armando-maradona-sufrio-paro-respiratorio-grave_0_hCcpbyiC-.html to read a truly remarkable obituary
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