Diego Armando MARADONA
What a sell! That Maradona you see today, that kind of distorted portrait, a swollen face on a flappy body, that's not Maradona but a clumsy double of him, always involved in blunders and brawls. Nothing to do with football, even if newspapers and magazines are always ready to overstate his extravagant vicissitudes, stressing his decline. Even Arrigo Sacchi, who among so many folishnesses made in person, still should save some sense, took the liberty to claim : " Who did win more? Colombo, playing for 3 years with Milan, or Maradona, playing 7 years with Napoli? Luckily nobody listened to him, because otherwise it would take the ambulance after the booes.
We don't agree with all this lynching going on around Maradona, the former star, the former everything, even if he is the first one to shove himself by giving up an at least acceptable human condition. We don't agree because the man who became, worldwide, famous as the "Pibe de Oro", has probably been the greatest football player ever, and his current sillinesses are not enough to cancel all the magics he showed for a decade. Therefore, hands off from him!!!
For us Maradona still remains the one we want to remember, no matter what the austere opinion-makers say. Just look at his face and you'll realize that is a false image, a disfigurement produced by cocaine, his real owner, which dosn't care about his legend and our nostalgia. Don't believe those pathetic announcements about his intention to quit football, in Argentina or anywhere else. Nobody swallows the bait anymore.
On the contrary, if he finally would put an end to his clumsy appearances, where he looks like a stuffed puppet among young athletes, he would relieve all of those who don't like to see his glorious past being crushed so quickly. So let's forget this corpulent prisoner of his old glory and drug, and let's try to focus on the real Diego. Diego is football. Diego embodied it, for more than a decade, in such a sanguine and intense way that he eventally became the symbol itself of this game. Along with him it didn't end just his darting sprint with the ball stuck on his left foot but also the last period of the greatest ingenious talents of football: Platini, Zico and Maradona, an unrepeatable triad of magicians of goal, which, today, would probably send awry all the certitudes of those "Professors" who seem to be so deeply devoted to sacrifice football to their own tactics.
Maradona always proved to be irreducible to the most rigid football schemes, emerging, instead, as the speck of colour which upsets all the plans by inventing something new before the opponents can organize. He proved to be the greatest ever just by bending the extreme athleticism of modern football by his inimitable talent. Diego was a sprinting funambulist, a sinewy divinity of dribbling. He made pirouettes as rapid as bolts, his action seemed to be pushed by a superior instinct and no obstacle could stop it. Diego was the "King of goal". He scored by astuteness, by strenght, by fineness. Goals always and whatever.
In a football which already was more and more characterized by athleticism and collectivism, Diego won a World Cup and half just by himself (1986-1990), while all our national wiseacres kept on claiming that, in modern football, a single player can't lay down the law.
With Napoli he won the italian Championship twice, in spite of being already conditioned by that vice which , today, humiliates him all around the world. He won beyond the impossible, he won when it was more difficult. He won by fighting, at the same time, another losing war against the whole world and its vices. He won wasting his own talent, squeezing it as an inexhaustible fruit. He won giving all he had to give, without depriving his fans and football of anything. He was a 9 years old little wild indian, when he became a colt, playing with Argentinos Juniors.
He was one of the so-called "cebollitas" ( little onions) who were expected to symbolize the future, while helping, as ball-boys, during the games of the major team. Already then, during the half-time, he was applauded by the fans who, enraptured, admired his dribbles with what seemed to be a "magnet-ball" he never let fall down. Therefore he was already famous when , the 20th of October 1976, 10 days before being 16, he made his debut with the major team, playing the second half of a regular-season game, versus Talleres. Two weeks later ( November 11) he scored his first couple goals versus San Lorenzo. A star was born and football was going to become something new.
He missed the World Cup triumph in 1978, because of a surplus of zeal by his mentor Menotti. However goals abounded with the red jersey of Argentinos. In 1981 Boca Juniors acquired him by a record-figure of 10 thousand millions of italian lira. When he wasn't 22 yet, he came in Europe, lured by big amounts of money, to play for Barcelona. He was already an idol with the national team and scored 116 goals in 166 games in the Spanish League. Two seasons in Spain, however, revealed themselves to be enough to change his life. He stayed 6 months far from football because of a viral hepatitis and many others because of Goicoechea, stopper of Athletic Bilbao, who broke tibia and perone of his left leg.
When he was ready to comeback controversies and brawls gave him the reputation of a spoilt champion pushing him to have a change of air. That summer started his experience with Napoli (After an exhausting negotiation he was acquired for 12 thousand millions of italian lira, payable over three years). The 5th of July he got in Napoli where he found triumphant fans cheering his first italian sighs. Many, ironically, smiled looking at this capricious "little Prince" arrived to decorate the "sitting-room of poor men". However, as soon as he played, all this superficial chattering stopped. Short, thick and sinewy, Diego proved to be a demon able to dribble overcoming any barrier by his fulminant moves. The union between pure talent and quickness revealed itself to be explosive. His free-kicks were telecontrolled bullets, his lobs were stokes of the brush, his shots were lethal darts. His football, then, was a continous invention.
Zico was a softer champion, a supple panther with hidden moves and sudden scratches. Platini was "the disdainful Prince of football" who seemed to be, almost accidentally, arrived at the field to dictate his own law by a dash of hauteur. Maradona wasn't this kind of player. He deeply threw himself into the game filling it up by the ever-young blood of geniuses. He invented for his teammates by opening defenses and giving always his best, sparing no effort.No other player was defended by his own teammates as Maradona was for his pure loyalty. He never refused his responsabilities, he never escaped his duty, until drug changed him. An age-less total champion.
He gave Argentina another World Cup and won 2 italian Championships, 1 UEFA Cup, 1 Italy Cup. After seven seasons shady episodes pushed him to flee. The Easter Day of 1991 he was disqualified because, a few weeks earlier, after Napoli-Bari, it was found some cocaina in his urine. He departed from Fiumicino to never comeback in Italy, where he left a non-recognized son, also called Diego Armando, who immediately had to deal with journalists and photographers. Maradona also left a stream of regrets and polemics. After his italian experience was over he opened the door to a long chain of troubles. He was arrested for drug in Argentine, he went to play to Seville, he faced new polemics and new comebacks with Newell's Old Boys which, however he left after just a few months.
He went back to lead Argentine over Australia in a play-off game for the preliminary heats of the 1994 World Championship in U.S., where, shining, tried to complete his own revenge. However behind his inhuman shout to the television camera, after the wonderful goal versus Greece, there was just another disqualification in ambush. He was turned out from the World Championship because of a doping made to lose weight.
Other 15 months, other comebacks, with Mandiyu', Racing and Boca, for other polemics and confessions on drug, with the faithful Claudia always at his side and his daughters Dalmita and Giannina to accompany his turbid decline. However, as we said, this is all another story, with the appendix of recents alarms about a possible, unexpected dead. Maybe even on the football field.
Like if he wasn't already dead, a long time ago, for those who participated to his magical dream and will never stop to be grateful to him.
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