In Argentina, Diego Maradona is a god. To millions of his compatriots, in fact, he is god with a capital “g”. He has been one since he was 15 years old when his professional football career began in 1975.
He was the greatest footballer on earth during his day and millions insist that he was the greatest of all time.
His divinity has been extolled in countless ways by the people of Argentina and those of Naples where he singlehandedly lifted Napoli by the bootstraps to crush its perennial rivals — Juventus, AC Milan and AS Roma.
A screen displays a photo of late Argentinian football legend Diego Maradona as players hold a minute of silence in homage to Maradona prior to the Uefa Europe League Group F match between Napoli and Rijeka on November 26, 2020 at the San Paolo stadium in Naples.
Photo credit: Filippo Monteforte | AFP
Gustavo Bernstein, an Argentine psychologist and author wrote a book entitled “Maradona: Iconography of a Nation” in which he stated: “Maradona is our maximum term of reference. No one bears our emblem more nobly. To no other, in the last 20 years, have we offered up so much passion. Argentina is Maradona. Maradona is Argentina.”
He was also a member of their 1966 World Cup squad. A renaissance man with a keen intellect, Perfumo contrasted the lives lived by Maradona and Julius Caesar, the dictator of imperial Rome.
“Caesar always had a slave by his side who would say to him, ‘Remember that you are human, remember that you are human.’ With Maradona it’s the other way around. For more than 20 years they’ve been telling him, ‘Remember that you are God, remember that you are God.”’
And so Maradona came to believe. In an illuminating May 2000 story published by the Sunday Review of The Independent on Sunday, Perfumo said: "The life of a professional footballer is tragic by definition. It's tragic because it is destined to end while you are still young. You feel a terrible desolation when you hung up your boots for the last time. It's like a kind of death. You lived to play. You are an idol. You never quite shake off the sadness of never being able to play again."
Fans hold photos of Argentinian late football legend Diego Armando Maradona outside the Casa Rosada government house as they wait to pay their tribute to his coffin in Buenos Aires, on November 26, 2020. Argentine football legend who died of a heart attack Wednesday at the age of 60, will be laid to rest in the Jardin de Paz cemetery, where his parents were also buried, Sebastian Sanchi told AFP. Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP
Photo credit: Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP
He knew what he was talking about and Maradona, wracked by cocaine abuse and recovering under the benevolent gaze of the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom he reverently called his “second father”, said it in a lot more poignant terms: “Football is passion, like loving your mother,” he said.
“Now I have a little trouble with my heart, but I see a ball and I get desperate. I’m desperate to play.”
His treatment was successful and he was fit again to accept the adoration of his compatriots as he was feted with Argentina’s Sportsman of the 20th Century award.
A sensitive man with trouble controlling both positive and negative emotions, his voice broke and tears streamed down his face when he returned to the subject of leaving the pitch. “When you’re playing you believe football will never end,” he told his enraptured audience.
It was this sense of feeling lost that drove him to substance abuse. It has condemned many to a life in the wilderness and still others to an early grave. But some have got a good grip on life’s levers and made a successful transition to other callings.
Wildest of rollercoasters
Perfumo, for one, spent many years mourning the passing of his playing days before training as a psychologist and later becoming a newspaper columnist and author.
Great players, such as fellow Argentine Alfredo de Stefano, Franz Beckenbauer of Germany, Pele of Brazil and Johan Cruyff of The Netherlands, all hailed as the greatest of their time, made this transition seamlessly. But not Maradona who took his adoring people through the wildest of rollercoasters.
But that was later. In his halcyon days, he inspired a fanaticism that only a superhuman entity could. Take the case of Napoli, which carried a resentful, underdog complex when faced with the rich clubs from northern Italy.
In this file photo taken on February 26, 2013 football legend Argentinian Diego Maradona holds a SSC Napoli number 10 jersey during a press conference in Naples. Argentinian football legend Diego Maradona passed away on November 25, 2020.
Photo credit: Carlo Hermann | AFP
The fans in Rome, Turin and Milan reserved their choicest insults for Napoli when the southerners came calling as they sang: "What a are terrible stink,/ Even the dogs run away./ The Neapolitans are coming./Naples shirt, Naples cholera,/ You are the shame of all Italy.”
That was until Maradona came. And they shut up; Maradona, literary all by himself, shut them up. In fact, the only time Napoli became champions of Italy, in 1987 and 1990, was when Maradona played for them. They respectfully retired his Number 10 jersey when he left.
Those who say Maradona was the greatest footballer of all time argue that he won matches and tournaments when surrounded by ordinary players. In contrast, they say, Pele could have sat out the 1958, 1962 and 1970 Brazilian squads and the Selecao would still have won the World Cup. Such was their strength in depth. But not Argentina or Napoli without Maradona.
To him, Maradona was a football genius, not a god. Valdano has been effusive about Maradona’s generosity, on and off the pitch. In the Sunday Review story of 20 years ago, he said: “He was a capricious, rebellious person - except when he was playing. On the pitch we all loved him.
Why? Because in the football world you esteem competitive courage greatly and the moral courage to face up to great challenges. “And Diego had that in abundance. If the game was getting difficult he knew he had to offer something extra — to do a Maradona.
The game against England was the most difficult of the ’86 World Cup. You should have tossed a coin on the result. He tossed the coin, with his foot, with his hand. But his technical genius was the quality that set him apart.
Cesar Luis Menotti, who left the teenage Maradona out of his 1978 World Cup winning team and later coached him at both Argentina and Barcelona, concurred with the forward’s view. And added more.
“Yes, he always had the respect and recognition of his fellow players,” Menotti said.
“He took much as much delight in seeing them score as if he had scored himself. But the players also know that he had won the game for them when inspiration visited him.
“He was a great footballer, not only as an individual but in every sense. He understood that football was a team game, he had that vision.
“He would play a very simple game, until the time came when he knew he had to impose himself. Beyond the genius of his technique, he had a great knowledge of the game.”
If an opinion poll were done asking Argentines to name the greatest single moment in their country’s history, most would nominate their 2-1 quarter final victory over England in the 1986 World Cup which they went on to win.
Maradona scored both goals, one by way of a handball and the other through a sublime act of genius.
He called his handball the hand of God. It was a wicked trick that he got away with since neither the centre referee nor any of his assistants saw it. England goalkeeper Peter Shilton protested vigorously to no avail.
In football, as in all sport, cheating is wrong and is not only frowned upon, but severely punished when discovered. But don’t tell that to Argentines when it came to Maradona, especially against old enemy England.
In this file photo taken on May 22, 1986 Argentine football star Diego Maradona, wearing a diamond earring, balances a ball on his head as he walks off the practice field following the national selection's practice session in Mexico City.
Photo credit: Jorge Duran | AFP
On their way to winning the 1966 World Cup, England defeated Argentina 1-0 in the quarter finals in roughhouse game.
In the post-match press conference, Sir Alf Ramsey, the England manager, made this outburst: “They play like animals.” The remark has never been forgotten in Argentina.
Next the two countries fought a war in 1982 over some remote south Atlantic islands that the English call the Falklands and Argentines the Malvinas. Argentina invaded the islands and England sent a task force that evicted them.
This resulted in feelings of deep national humiliation. So when Argentina eliminated England from the World Cup four years later, Maradona’s exploits transported the nation to the stratosphere.
Menotti said: “Now we’ve had the good fortune not only that Maradona has been admired everywhere in the world, but that he scored that goal, precisely against the English, just four years after the Malvinas war.
“He scores that goal with his hand. ‘Better yet!” people say. ‘In the war, OK we lost, but at football we busted their (behind) with a goal scored with a hand ball.”
Maradona was seen as the expression of the Argentine people as a whole, as the man who avenged the nation’s wounded pride.
In this file photo taken on June 29, 1986 Argentine football star team captain Diego Armando Maradona displays the World Cup won by his team after a 3-2 victory over West Germany at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.
Photo credit: File | AFP
His two goals gave the most refined expression to the two qualities which Argentines believed they possess in richest abundance, “viveza” (a sly cunning) and talent.
Victor Hugo Morales, a radio broadcast commentator and Argentine national hero, wept as he uttered elongated versions of Maradona’s names. “Diegoooo!” he bellowed. “Maradonaaaa!” he howled. “The greatest player of all time! What planet did you come from? Argentina two, England Zero. Diego Armando Maradona! For these tears, for this… Argentina….two, England … zero!”
Morales was giving expression to the euphoria sweeping Argentina. His words carried emotions and longings and desires that went far beyond the satisfaction of seeing Maradona score a goal of unique beauty. With his second goal, Maradona gave Argentina the same sweet revenge that he gave the people of Naples when he silenced the loud and arrogant clubs of northern Italy. Many Argentines consider England the greatest European power.
This was the country that for 150 years reminded them of their powerlessness by clinging to the Malvinas and evicting them when they tried to recover them.
That was why Argentines savored Maradona’s first goal in that game almost as much as the second: because he scored it with his hand. It was, of course, an injustice. But they saw it as just deserts for the English who are still mad at it to this day.
Did they suffer envy at his riches and his veneration as a god? Says Jorge Valdano: “We did not – because his talent was so inimitable that it was beyond comparison. The money he earned might have caused acrimony among his companions, but his generosity preserved their affection.
In the national team, when we played friendlies, we had one rate with Maradona and another without him. Say $500,000 with him, $300,000 without him.
The Argentine Football Federation would give him the difference and he would share it among the other players.”
Roy Gachuhi, a former Nation Media Group sports reporter, is a writer with The Content House. [email protected]
