Neapolitan family of Maradona maintains museum in the city | italian soccer

There, in a small improvised museum in the basement of a residential building that houses treasures from the Argentine’s career, Massimo Vignati, responsible for maintaining the collection, says that he has not been able to sleep or eat since Wednesday, November 25.

– My mother is desolate, closed at home. For her, it is as if she had lost a son – says Massimo, who met Maradona as soon as the Argentine landed to be the number 10 shirt for little Napoli in 1984. At that time, the Neapolitan Massimo was only 10 years old.

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His father, Salverio Silvio Vignati, was the team’s caretaker for 35 years, between 1971 and 2006, when he died at age 60 after being diagnosed with advanced cancer. Salverio was in charge of opening and closing the San Paolo Stadium, the temple where Maradona reigned for seven years, as well as being a kind of “handyman” for Napoli.

The relationship with the Argentine idol deepened to the point that the Neapolitan family became one of the foundations of Diego Armando Maradona’s life in the city. This was thanks to two women from the Vignati clan: Lucía, Massimo’s mother, now 74, was a governess of the Maradona house in Naples for more than six years; Raffaella, the older sister, ended up taking care of Maradona’s first two daughters, Dalma and Gianinna.

Lucia and Maradona met shortly after the player’s arrival in the Italian city in July 1984, when he was received as king. For the first six months, the Argentine lived in a hotel, then moved to a house in a charming Neapolitan neighborhood from where you can see the city’s gulf and, in the background, Vesuvius.

Maradona, remembers Massimo, went to a dinner where he met the food made by Lucia. From there came the invitation to work for him. The ties were further tightened by the fact that her husband is the janitor at the San Paolo Stadium.

– We know the man, not the character. And I can guarantee that the man was much bigger than the player he was – says Massimo, who played football with Maradona and other friends every Monday. – They were games, we played futsal or even soçaite. He had a lot of fun.

When Maradona returned to Naples, he always visited Lucia’s house. Seven years ago, when the elder Dalma visited Naples for ten days, Maradona insisted that her daughter stay with her former housekeeper.

– It was a way for Diego to show his daughter what we are and what we were. He was a very simple man. We are 11 siblings, but Diego ended up becoming my mother’s twelfth child.

The last time Massimo and Lucía spoke with Maradona, she said, was seven months ago, when the Argentine called her.

The small and improvised museum under his responsibility was created from the donations of objects given to the family by Maradona himself or collected by Salverio during the years of cleaning.

There is the player’s original contract with Napoli, jerseys from different stages of Maradona’s career – but especially those from the Napoli era, but there are also other clubs where he spent, such as Newell’s Old Boys, and the Argentine national team -, boots from football. (like the Puma that the player used against Belgium in the 1986 World Cup, when he scored the two goals of the game), balls from different seasons, bags to store the uniform and even the bench that Maradona used in the stadium locker room. San Paolo, now forbidden to use.

He says he often receives offers from collectors to sell one or another item in the collection, but that none of the items are “priced.”

The collection, estimated at more than 300 objects, will only leave the place where it is if it is taken to a more noble space, such as the San Paolo Stadium, which should soon be renamed – said the mayor of Naples – as the Diego Armando Stadium. Maradona.

Massimo, however, points out that there are still no deals with the club for a hypothetical museum dedicated to Napoli’s greatest idol.

Another member of the Maradona family in Naples, who also could not fire the Argentine, was one of his five children, Diego Armando Sinagra Maradona, born in 1986.

Diego Júnior, as he is known, is the result of an extramarital relationship between the former player and the Italian Cristina Sinagra and was only officially recognized by his father in 2007.

At 34, the son could not travel to Argentina because he is isolated after being infected by the coronavirus.

When Maradona turned 60 in October, Diego Júnior wrote to him: “They always ask me if I had forgiven you. How not to do this if with a hug you ended up with so much suffering? I will forgive you a thousand times and do you know why? Because every child has a superhero and you have always been mine. I love you dad”.