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A very special chapter in the definitive biographies of Diego Armando Maradona will deserve the intense weeks he spent in Mexico, where in full power he won the World Cup and also the months when, already very deteriorated, he directed in the second division.
The deceased star traveled to Aztec lands to live two significant “romances”. He was 25 years old when he had his first idyll as a great leader of the Argentina team and 57 when he returned to direct the Dorados de Sinaloa.
Summer of ’86
During the 1986 World Cup, Argentina focused on Club América, in the south of Mexico City.
Diego shared a room with forward Pedro Pablo Pasculli. The 10th and his partner were determined that this room would be “our home for a month.”
La Albiceleste started the road without the full confidence of their fans. “They didn’t know who we were playing,” recalled Maradona, who had a hard time in the first game due to the rough play of South Korea.
Maradona was more decisive as the tournament progressed. He had to score the goal in the 1-1 draw against Italy.
After each good result, Argentines lived their cabals like going shopping in a mall in the south of Mexico City or eating at a steakhouse in an upper-class neighborhood.
Then they returned to the facilities of America. There the Mexican journalist Antonio Moreno met Maradona.
“I worked in the program Los Protagonistas de Imevisión and luckily I had to cover the Argentine team,” Moreno recalls for AFP.
“The Argentines arrived before anyone else and Maradona fully got in to win that World Cup. Bilardo trusted him a lot. I had to interview him many times in the field of America and he was convinced that it had to be his World Cup; So he was very simple, he was at 100 mentally, his body too, he was still a very healthy young man, I remember very well ”, Moreno details.
The young reporter at the time remembers that the Argentine 10, who already identified him by the hub of his microphone, asked him for a video copy that compiled his best plays in the tournament set to music with the tango Uno.
“There was still that innocence of the players to be aware of when they spoke of them on television,” he said.
The World Cup continued its course, Argentina threw Uruguay in the round of 16 and then in the quarterfinals they faced England where Maradona made her the villain and hero in a span of five minutes of the second half.
“I was on the broadcast of the game against England,” Teodoro Cano, then a Televisa commentator, recalls for AFP.
“I had to see the goal he scored with his hand; The play was so fast that most of us in the stadium did not realize that it was with the hand. Some may say that it was a genius, others that it was a trick, but then he took it out on the goal he scored almost from midfield, ”Cano adds.
Of that game, Diego boasted of “the Hand of God” because it had been like taking the wallet of the English, and also of the Goal of the Century: “The goal of my life.”
Maradona put on another masterful display against Belgium in the semifinals and met his goal against Germany in the final.
Over the years, every time Pasculli and Maradona saw each other, they remembered those weeks they spent in their room at Club América and said to each other: “What are you doing, guacho world champion?”.
Parallel paths
After the 1986 World Cup, Antonio Moreno continued his career in journalism and followed in Maradona’s footsteps.
“I was close to him in Italia 90, in Trigoria, where Argentina was staying; I also had to see the black Ferrari that his brother let him drive; in the 1994 World Cup, I had to narrate Argentina’s games, including Greece’s when he ran towards the camera to celebrate his goal, ”he said.
Maradona stopped being a footballer and used to travel the world to play exhibition matches; then he became technical director.
Moreno, for his part, partially left his work as a communicator and assumed the project of the Football Hall of Fame, located in Pachuca (central Mexico). Maradona was one of those chosen at the first inauguration held.
“He couldn’t come when he entered the Hall of Fame in 2011 because he was conducting in Saudi Arabia,” recalls Moreno, director of the venue.
An autumn love
In September 2018, the Dorados de Sinaloa gave the worldwide resonance bell by hiring Maradona as a coach. They wanted to be promoted to the first division with him.
“I want to give Dorados what I missed when I was sick,” offered the Argentine in his presentation. “Today I want to see the Sun, I want to go to bed at night,” added Diego who spoke and walked with difficulties.
Even so, Diego did something with the Dorados that led them to the final of the Apertura-2018 and Clausura-2019 tournaments. Sinaloa as a whole was delighted with him. Even when the state suffered floods, Maradona appealed to the whole of Mexico to support the victims.
In parallel, Antonio Moreno continued in contact with the Argentine; He had in mind to take him to the induction ceremony of the Hall of Fame in 2018 to honor the exporter Héctor Miguel Zelada, his teammate in 1986.
“He already had a plane ready for him,” recalls Moreno, who couldn’t count on 10 because the Dorados were focused on the final phase.
“I will have talked to him about four or five times; his voice was already like someone who is half asleep and half awake. It was already very short of words, you heard monosyllables, ”Moreno details.
Maradona left the Dorados in June 2019. The following year, his death on November 25 caused sadness in those who saw him succeed in Mexico.
“Here we saw him in his prime and doing incredible things with the ball close to his foot. He was a magician “, summarizes Teodoro Cano.
For his part, several hours after the news was known, Antonio Moreno was still shocked: “As the years go by, you will remember the moment when someone said to you: ‘What do you think? Maradona died ‘And you didn’t believe it! One suddenly thinks that legends like Maradona are immortal. “
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