[ad_1]
Less than a month ago I wrote how Diego Maradona, against all odds, had turned 60. One day, I suggested, many had doubted this complex man would notice.
While we mourn his passing, it seems almost irrelevant to say that we all saw him coming, that we knew that his body was giving up little by little and that his mind was beginning to fight, because somehow as Diego Armando Maradona was concerned, the normal rules . it never seemed to apply.
As much as I thought I knew Maradona, I realized once I started researching my book about him that I knew practically nothing.
And the reason for that is that there were 100 different Maradonas. The wizard, the cheater, the god, the flawed genius, the loving father, the serial unfaithful husband, the generous benefactor, the foul-mouthed lout, the neighborhood boy with magic in his boots, and the man who reached the top of the hill. mountain and fell, his body ravaged by cocaine.
- How England’s torment for Maradona turned him into an Argentine deity ‘Ser Maradona was beautiful’ – tributes and reactionObituary – The imperfect icon of Argentine football
Diego did not take good care of himself, but football, to his shame, did not take care of him either. For years, while playing, in Argentina, Spain and Italy, he was injected with all kinds of drugs to ease the constant pain he was in, often with no idea what he was being given.
From the moment he joined Argentinos Juniors when he was young, it was obvious that this was not a normal player. Today his abilities would give him greater protection. Back then, they simply served as the red rag of provocation that would ensure that he would be the victim of brutal challenges wherever he played.
Those challenges, many unpunished, left him to deal with a series of terrible injuries throughout his career and assured him that he spent much of his life in crippling pain.
Among them, during his time at Barcelona, was the famous 1983 entry of Andoni Goicoechea, from Athletic Club, nicknamed the Butcher of Bilbao in the United Kingdom. Maradona was left with a broken ankle. To this day, Goicoechea has a glass case at home in which he keeps the boots he wore when he did that terrible challenge, boots that have a fuller meaning for him, later in what was a terrible week for him too, How did you feel. The pressure of having stopped Maradona’s career, he would use them to score a goal in the European Cup. For Goicoechea, it’s a stark reminder of the ups and downs of soccer.
The rules changed as a direct consequence of some of the injuries Maradona received. When I interviewed him a few years ago, he told me that he thought players like Lionel Messi owed him a lot because some of the tickets he had endured would never be allowed today.
When he arrived at Naples in 1984, he was on his way to representing more than a team, but the hopes, dreams and aspirations of an entire country. Then came that unforgettable quarter-final match against England at the 1986 World Cup.
That Sunday in Mexico City, the world saw a single man, in more than one sense of the phrase, lift the mood of a depressed and oppressed nation to the stratosphere. With two goals in the space of four minutes, he allowed them to dare to dream that they, like him, could be the best in the world. He did it, as we well know, first by nefarious and then fascinatingly brilliant means.
In those moments, he went from star player to legend.
One of the people closest to him said that since he could produce goals like the second, he didn’t need to score like the first. Maradona laughed, happy to represent so many frustrations and to have such a loyal audience.
Last month I also wrote that to understand Diego well you have to know the enigma that Argentina is; a country that needs such figures to be its messiahs, to bring it to the level of greatness for which it considers itself worthy. It must also be appreciated that it was a man who lived a history of incredible paradoxes, of a series of errors and subsequent corrections, of epic feats, of decadence and resurrection.
Diego was a rebel. He was a rebel who had power, and not only did he know it, but he was also prepared to use it frequently for many good causes or friends who needed his help.
When I was a young superstar with Argentinos, the club played friendlies in Argentina and abroad and used Diego as the star of the show to get paid. It was the era of the first color televisions and all gamers were desperate to receive their, until then, bonuses for winning without paying to buy one. However, they only received their money when Diego, 18, told the Argentine president that if they did not pay them, he would not play.
He was a pioneer for so many people in the sport and for so many aspects of the game that are now accepted as perfectly normal.
He was the first player to have a full-time agent, the first to have a physical trainer, one of the first players to stand up and be counted and fight for players’ rights to get a fair deal.
He was one of the first to fight for the safety of those who were forced to play in dangerous and sweltering weather, such as that experienced at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He was the first player to be prepared to shout from the rooftops his belief that FIFA was rotten to the core.
And he did so long before FBI investigators began uncovering corruption within the world governing body for soccer. He did it at a time when no one wanted to move the ship.
He rebelled because he believed in a sense of natural justice. He believed that it was the footballers who should be the stars of the show and not the governing bodies. Throughout his career, he fought for fairer treatment, for greater respect for talented players, including himself.
Napoli would prove to be his greatest triumph at the club, but also the scene of his worst fall. Napoli did and Napoli did it … and then they broke it. And he broke himself.
In his first season, the club struggled to work with him, unwilling to embrace his obvious talent. They finished eighth. Then they began to understand how important he was to the club and finished third the following season.
So it might be fair to say that Maradona’s spike started after that, in the 1985-86 season, when the team clicked. And then, after Argentina’s win in the 1986 World Cup, he led Napoli to their first Scudetto. To show that it was no coincidence, he also led them to the Coppa Italia that season.
This was in 1987. Trapped in a fish tank in a city where he could not move without being chased by a mix of fans and paparazzi, he had resorted to taking cocaine in the bathroom of his luxurious home. He was already addicted, had started skipping training and was now surrounding himself with those sycophants happy to follow him down the dark path to self-destruction while telling him how cool he was and how much fun he was having fun.
It was already decaying.
Buenos Aires has been at the center of Argentina’s torrent of pain and affection for Maradona
Still he managed to secure another championship with Napoli in 1989-90. But he was a shadow of the player he had been a few years earlier.
“Imagine,” he told me with more than a small sense of regret, “what it could have been, what it could have accomplished if it had been clean.”
It’s all part of the puzzle that Maradona is and what makes researching my book about him so fascinating.
Who was he really? Against England, he was a crafty rules-rewriter and then a genius, all in under 250 seconds. As a footballer and as a man, he lived a life that reached the highest peaks before descending into the deepest and darkest channels of despair. He was unable to cope with the divine status bestowed upon him, but was apparently unable to survive without it.
It was misunderstood. As a result of being misunderstood, he felt that he was not loved. It is impossible to find another player who represented so many things for so many people, who lived the dream that he wanted, the one that they also wanted.
But what I will remember most is not the blunt, rude, and authoritarian character that he could certainly be, but rather the kind and considerate man. I remember the man preparing to ignore a dozen Argentina jerseys that were put on him to sign and instead chose the jersey of my beloved Biggleswade United, the out-of-league club where I am president, and then asked me if I wanted him to was photographed with him holding it.
We will not see their resemblance again.
Maradona in a Biggleswade United jersey? This is the evidence
Guillem Balague will write a regular column throughout the season and will also appear every Thursday on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Football Daily podcast, when the focus will be on European football.
You can download the latest Football Daily podcast here.
Source: bbc.com
[ad_2]