When Argentine legend Diego Armando Maradona passed away last week, the news traveled the planet at the speed of fiber. And the world went up in flames. Taking a step back from the ubiquitous emotionality is very much lacking in today’s media. A key figure in world football, he has experienced an extraordinary destiny, where comedy and tragedy mingle, in pursuit of a simple ball. Immediately some hasten to ask the question: “the best of all time”? The history of football is not stingy with very great players. In this area, comparisons are difficult given the difference in generations and the evolution of the game, with all kinds of praise balancing Pelé, Cruyff, Maradona, Platini and a few others. The way in which the disappearance of Maradona was celebrated in Argentina and Naples, places of his exploits, is delirious.
No one forgot to recall the England-Argentina meeting at the World Cup in Mexico on June 22, 1986. It was a very special match, after the Falklands war, which had just seen Argentina’s humiliation. by England, in a context of great tension between the two teams. Diego Maradona was there alone or almost the architect of the symbolic revenge of Argentina, by registering in front of 115,000 spectators a goal remained in the memories, one of the most beautiful in history, dribbling more than half of the opposing team starting from its camp. But this goal came after another, grotesque, handwritten, that the whole planet saw, except the referee. The English goalkeeper Schilton is still carried away in 2020, in the columns of the Daily Mail, even though he is saddened by ” learn of his death at such a young age ». “What I don’t like is that he never apologized. Instead, he used his expression “hand of God”. It wasn’t fair »…
A life of a novel. Contrary to so many other champions, transparent and cold, Maradona was a phenomenon of the times, a manifestation of our era, struggling with the easy life, drugs … He became the representative of the little ones who win against the big ones , who transgress to better reverse inequalities, he who, according to his friend Marcico “had a very complicated life because of his addictions”.
With us, in Occitania, there is another memory evoked by the character. It was the same year he had just flown over the Mexican World Cup. 1is October 1986, “El pibe de oro” faced the local team in Toulouse with a team from Naples already victorious in the first leg 1-0, in the European Cup. I was there. A priori, a simple formality facing a TFC without European reference, the certainties of the Italians bordering on arrogance. But a goal from Yannick Stopyra put the teams tied in a match of madness where the modest Benoît Tihy, player of duty, attached to direct individual marking, turning into a hero for a night, extinguished the Argentinian star. So much so that, since the decision could only come from shots on goal, an incredible thing, Maradona missed the exercise, thus giving the victory to Toulouse. “Marked in the panties” according to the expression, he could have pulled out during the match, while, according to Benoît Tihy, ” he behaved like a lord. He didn’t have a bad gesture, not a bad word. Just before the penalty shootout, he even walked twenty-five meters to congratulate me and shake my hand “. Would this not be the attitude of a child from the people, with a romantic destiny, made of excess, on the fringes of the camorra, who remains very attached to his origins?
Has he ever been an adult? This is undoubtedly because his part of being immature, easily influenced, appears so sincere that it has become legendary, because we love icons, but we also love rebels. He was both and was excluded in 1994 from the World Cup for doping. He was one of the most charismatic and controversial sportsmen in history … and certainly not an example of life for young people.
Legend of football, we have seen, thirty years after his departure from Italy, Naples display his effigy in hysterical demonstrations, as in Argentina where a funeral vigil was organized at the Presidential Palace. The whole world, confirming the universality of a sport with more FIFA member countries than the UN, mourned in recent days. Until Emmanuel Macron, generally a Twitter follower but not disdaining hyperbole, who split a two-page essay: ” The hand of God had placed a football genius on earth. She has just taken it back from us, with an unforeseen dribble which has deceived all our defenses… Dancer in crampons, not really an athlete, rather an artist, he embodied the magic of the game »(Sic). But even with less emphasis, couldn’t our President have dedicated a few lines to two other great athletes, who disappeared at the same time as Diego Maradona, Jacques Secrétin and Christophe Dominici? They were French.
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