It is difficult if not impossible to see another massive folk hero like Maradona walk on the surface of this earth again. That’s why despite his lingering health crisis, not one member of the global football confraternity ever envisaged his recent passing at the age of 60.
The world can only continue to console itself with the presence and longevity, on the pitch, of his compatriot, Lionel Messi, who has equally done well for himself. He uses the left foot to devastating effect as well and has been compared to Maradona. But Messi is nowhere near the heroic status and god-like following of Maradona in Argentina; nowhere near his rating in the world. This is because Messi has only excelled at club level – only Barcelona – and struggled to replicate his greatness in Argentine colours. But Maradona did not only captain the country to her second World Cup triumph in Mexico, 1986, he also led the Albiceleste to the final four years later in Italy where they lost to West Germany. On both occasions, Maradona was almost the only great player in the team. Maradona had to do a yeoman’s job. He was the soul, heart and backbone of the team. In over a decade, Messi has had to play with Sergio Aguero, Angel Di Maria, Javier Mascherano, Paulo Dybala, Lautaro Martinez and so many equally world class players, yet he hasn’t won even the Copa America for the national team. But the fact that Messi is being mentioned in the same sentence with the great Maradona is a testament to the fact that he has done so well and he’s one of the best the world has ever seen.
Another living legend who has been repeatedly compared to Maradona is a man who actually deserves to be up there as arguably the greatest of all time. Edison Arantes Do Nacimentos, widely known as Pele of Brazil. The Brazilian icon is the only player who won the World Cup three times – 1958 in Sweden as a 17 year old, 1962 in Chile and in 1970 in Mexico. While Pele scored lots of goals for both clubs and country, he is known to have played in the company of the country’s best. He was just a 17-year-old addition to the squad in 1958 though he contributed lots of goals and assists. He played no role at all in the 1962 triumph as he was injured after just a game. As for the 1970 winning team, there were equally extraordinary players like Tostao, Rivelinho, Jarzinho, Gerson, Carlos Alberto etc which means without Pele they could still have won it. But in the case of Maradona, he was about the only special player at the 1986 and 1990 World Cup squads, with due respect to Claudio Cambodia who played in the latter. Maradona carried the team on his head, put it on his back and single handedly led them to glory.
While Pele was great goal scorer and a scorer of great goals, Maradona was both rolled into one with the added quality of being able to do amazing things with the round leather on his left foot. Maradona was so magical with the ball that over 30,000 fans watched him during training sessions when he plied his trade in Barcelona and Napoli.
The argument in favour of Pele is his Spartan and disciplined lifestyle; the fact that he had no scandal that blighted his playing career and never cheated, unlike Maradona who had a troubled time on and off the pitch. He fought on the pitch, abused drugs, had too many women and had alcohol addiction. He was carried away by fame and fortune, had a bad company especially in Naples and lost it.
The rivalry between the duo was so intense that when it was time to choose the Player of the Century in 2000, Fifa had to share the award between them. When his death was announced after suffering cardiac arrest at the age of 60 recently, Pele penned an emotional tribute to his ‘friend’ and wished they will both have an opportunity to play together in heaven.
Aside the aforementioned, Argentina, a respected footballing nation, has also gifted the world other amazing soccer stars like Ariel Ortega, Gabriel Batistuta, Hernan Crespo and many others. But Maradona’s impact is beyond that of all of them put together.
In the exclusive class of icons like Pele, Franz Beckenbeaur, George Best, Ronaldo Delima, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Ronaldinho, Zidane, Neymar Jrn etc who can be said to be the best ever to play the beautiful game of football, Maradona stands out not just because of the great things he did on the pitch but because of the extra dimension he added to the game, the swagger, the charisma and the fact that he equally used his football to make political statements and use his fame to fight against what he perceived as injustice.
After George Best, he was the first modern day superstar in the game. He was the first player to have a full-time agent, the first to have a physical trainer, one of the first players who would stand up and be counted and fight for the rights of his teammates to get a fair deal from club owners and Football Associations. He once led a rebellion against one of his youth teams, forcing them to pay the players before they enterred the pitch for a particular crucial game.
He rebelled against FIFA and called it officials out for corruption, forcing FBI investigations on the world football governing body. He believed players and not officials should take the shine. To say Maradona was larger-than-life is an under statement.
He also once suggested to Late Pope John Paul II, to sell all the gold materials around his palatial home and use the proceeds to feed the poor around the world. Even in his dying days, he never stopped giving; he didn’t stop reaching out to the needy. He kept on advocating that no child in Argentina and indeed anywhere in the world should go hungry. Such emotions must have been due to his own personal history with childhood poverty.
Diego Armando Maradona was born to a poor family in the shanty town of Villa Fiorito in Buenos Aires on October 30, 1960. He was the first son after four daughters and he also had many kid brothers. Like all other soccer legends from Latin America, his was a case of little boy who used his football talents to save himself from hunger and thuggery and rescue his family from generational poverty.
His neighbourhood was a typical ghetto where the resources are not adequate and only the strongest thrive but football was his escape route from the harsh realities of the jungle. At the age of 8, he had already started pulling the strings at Buenos Aires while playing at Estrella Roja, his neighbourhood football club, where he was eventually spotted by a talent scout.
He made his professional debut for Argentinos Junior — about 10 days to his 16th birthday — on October 20, 1976, to become the youngest player in the history of Argentine Primera División.
In his five years at the club, he scored 115 goals in 167 appearances before landing a record $4 million deal to join Boca Juniors.
Maradona won the domestic league in his first season with Boca Juniors. He however departed to join Barcelona, a Spanish team in 1982 for another world transfer record.
He didn’t disappoint. He was a fans’ favourite as he helped the Catalonians edge Real Madrid to clinch the Copa del Rey in 1983. He was also instrumental in Barcelona’s victory over Athletic Bilbao in the Spanish Super Cup the same year. It was during this game that the whole world first caught a glimpse of the other side of Maradona. He had endured a lot kicks and confrontational moments with some of the opposing players and this developed into a full free for all at the end of the game. The crowd and television viewers saw the Argentine icon kicking every Bilbao player in sight. It was an embarrassing moment which the owners of the teams found distasteful. It accelerated his exit from the Spanish giants.
Earlier in the season after he put up a spectacular display in the El Clásico game against Real Madrid at the Bernabeau, he became the first Barcelona player to earn a standing ovation and overwhelming applause from Madrid fans. It took decades before any other Barcelona player, Ronaldinho, got treated to this honour at the Bernabeau.
His historic move to Napoli had the trappings of greatness from the beginning. About 75,000 fans welcomed him like a hero that he would later become. He inspired the club to break the northern domination of the Italian Seria A by winning it in 1987 and 1990. He also won the the Coppa Italia, the UEFA Cup and the Italian Supercup within the period.
Maradona was idolized in Napoli. He was simply a god, a folk hero. Like the force of gravity, whatever goes up must surely come down, his highest and brightest moment also marked the beginning of his gradual decline and descent into infamy. Stardom got to his head, he started keeping wrong companies with girls, cocaine and alcohol. His addiction affected him badly, he began to miss trainings, got fined by the club a couple of times before he was eventually banned for 15 months. His eventful time at Naples had come to an end.
After the dust of his first drug ban settled, Maradona had short stints at Sevilla, Newell’s Old Boys before a return to Boca Juniors, his childhood club, in 1994.
The 80s was a very eventful one for him on and off the pitch. 24-year-old Maradona married Claudia Villafañ, his long-time fiancée, at Buenos Aires in 1984. They were blessed with two daughters; Dalma Nerea and Gianinna Dinorah. The couple, however, divorced in 2004. The late icon allegedly had other kids with many mistresses.
It was also this period that he had the most successful time with the national team. With seven games played, 53 take-ons completed, 5 assists and 5 goals, Maradona was indisputably the driving force behind Argentina’s second World Cup final win in 1986 over West Germany.
In a 5-minute span that summarized his ups-and-down life story, the 26-year-old captain demonstrated his capacity to move from the sublime to the ridiculous or vice versa, in the crunch quarter final tie against England on June 22, 1986. One moment, he was seen contesting for the ball against the lanky English goalkeeper, Peter Shilton; when the diminutive playmaker could not reach the ball with his head, he simply used his hand and the ball was in the net; 1-0 in favour of the South Americans. The next moment, just few minutes later, he proved himself to the world to be a beast who is capable of doing both good and evil by taking the ball in the middle of the park and dribbling past six English players and to slot home a very fine finish and it was 2-0. The English were finished as they didn’t realize what hit them within split seconds. Maradona magic just hit them below the belt.
The referee, Ali Bin Naseer, didn’t respond to the constant complaint of the English squad that the Argentine skipper had used his hand to slot in the first goal and before they could come to terms with reality and psychologically recover from the shock, the Maradona magic has produced a second goal. Even though tournament golden boot winner, Garry Lineker, pulled one back for the Three Lions, Maradona had done enough to take his country to the semi finals against Belgium.
Maradona later claimed he scored the first goal with the aid of the ‘hand of God’ which came in to avenge the injustice the English had done to them during the Falklands war. In his well-received memoir, Maradona bragged about first getting away with the ‘Hand of God’, saying: “You’re trying to reach the ball and the hand moves independently.”
The encounter came after the 1982 war between the two nations, in which 649 Argentinians and 255 British troops died during three months of fighting.
Even though Maradona led his country to the final which they won against West Germany, won the Player of the Tournament and went on to become arguably the most celebrated player in football history, Shilton – unlike other members of the English squad – failed to forgive him, not even in death. In his Daily Mail column after Maradona’s death was announced, the goalkeeping icon claimed his team had everything going for them and could not have lost if Maradona did not cheat with the ‘hand of God’ goal. He called him a cheat who lacked sportsmanship and who failed to apologize for his misdemeanor against his team. The backlash Shilton suffered after publishing the piece meant that its not only in Africa that people are scolded for speaking ill about the dead.
Maradona also led his team to the final of the World Cup in Italia, 90 where they lost to West Germany. One of the iconic moments of that edition was when he lined up against the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon on the opening day and majority of the players started touching him and crying. One, they realized that the god of football they had hero-worshipped for years was actually human. Two, they didn’t believe they were actually sharing a dug-out and a pitch with such an extraordinary player. To them, it was the highest point of their individual careers. The Lions however stunned their more illustrious opponents and beat them 1-0, with the support of a partisan Milan crowd which was angry with Maradona for leading Napoli to the Italian Serie A earlier in the year. After the game which saw two red cards and countless yellow cards for the Lions, the witty Maradona bragged that he had ended racism in the world since be could make Italians support Africans.
Maradona’s prolific playing days were blighted with the use of cocaine and alleged ties to crime syndicates like the Camorra group and the Naples mafia. His abuse of illegal substance started in the mid-1980s during his stay at Barcelona and would later become an addiction which spanned most part of his career. The football star was handed his first major punishment in 1991 after he was banned by Napoli for 15-month for testing positive for cocaine.
During that period, he was also arrested in Buenos Aires and charged with possession and distribution of cocaine.
After the ban, he was back into the Argentina national team for the 1994 World Cup in USA. But not long after that, he was enmeshed in another drug scandal in the group stage of the tournament during which he embarked on a wild celebration after scoring against Greece.
The ex-Napoli man thereafter played what would be his last game for Argentina against Nigeria, with the Albiceleste defeating the Super Eagles by 2-1. He was consequently expelled after he tested positive for five variants of ephedrine, a banned substance, bringing his international career to an abrupt end.
His entire playing career would also come to an end in 1997 after he failed another drug test — a record third time in six years. He scored 259 goals in 491 matches for both clubs and country.
He was however said to have defended his decision to get involved with banned substances. Some sport writers have quoted him to have said he got involved with cocaine to mitigate the unbearable pains he suffered from too many kicks he got from opposing players. As for the substance he was found with during USA 94 World Cup, he said he took it innocently as part of his weight loss routine.
While celebrating Maradona, we must however drive home the message against drug abuse and tell the young ones that they must avoid drug addiction at all cost. No one could capture the message better than the late legend himself who in an interview with Sky Sports pundit, Guillem Balague, said: “Just imagine what I could have been, what I could have achieved if I had been clean.”
Shortly after retirement, he started adding weight to the point of being obese. In 2005, he underwent gastric bypass surgery after which he was treated for hepatitis and alcohol-related illness at a hospital in Buenos Aires two years later.
He fell ill again recently and had a successful brain surgery, only for him to be pronounced dead days later on November 25, the same date his childhood role model, George Best, had died in 2005.
If dead people could look back and see how they are being celebrated, Maradona would be so proud of his achievements with the way he was honoured in all corners of the world. The biggest honour came from Napoli as it’s stadium was renamed Estadio Diego Armando Maradona’, days after their hero’s departure. The club had after his exit from the club in the early 90s permanently rested the no.10 jersey in his honour.
In what looked like the premonition of his death and parting shot to his beloved Argentines weeks before a superior ‘hand of God seized him, Maradona had on his 60th Birthday on October 30, said:
“My wish is that this pandemic passes as soon as possible and that my Argentina can move forward. I want all Argentines to be well, we have a beautiful country and I trust that our President will be able to get us out of this moment.
“It makes me very sad when I see children who do not have enough to eat, I know what it feels like in the belly 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.”
Love him or loathe him, Maradona will forever remain a hero in Argentina, a source of inspiration to kids in the many ghettos of Latin America, a footballing genius in Europe and an all-around entertainer on and off the pitch whose prodigious talent and witty nature gave billions of people across many generations around the world something to smile about.