Diego Maradona died yesterday at the age of 60. He was the best player on the planet for ten years. He was as much a tormented and maligned man as a beloved and respected player.
Diego Maradona is not dead. The body he was in may have stopped functioning, but Diego Maradona is not dead. He will not die until his legend of a genius player along with a tormented man is extinguished. However, his legend is eternal.
Diego Maradona, a treasure
In October 1960, Diego Maradona was born in a hospital in the name predestined for him: Eva Peron. Because it is nothing to say that the Argentinian number 10 will have been the equal of the immense national figures, like that of Evita. In the middle of a modest family and a slum in the Corrinties region, he grew up with a balloon grafted to his foot. He was spotted at only 10 years old by a local club and was already entertaining the gallery. At 15, he was already considered a treasure when he started in the Premier League with theArgentinos Junior. With the sole strength of his feet, his eyes and his heart, he made this club, accustomed to the struggle for survival, take on an unimaginable scale. Without being selected by Menotti for the 1978 World Cup, he is the leader of the junior team. It is thanks to him that Argentina is the U21 world champion.
As we would ask ourselves the question of whether a work of art should go to the Louvre or Orsay, it only remains to Diego Maradona more than one choice to make: Boca or River. It is finally Boca who wins and goes all-in for the prodigy in 1981. Even if it means going into more debt than reason, the yellow and blue club of the capital bet on the attraction that Maradona will arouse. Boca mainly relies on the trophies that the Golden Boy will bring back to the cupboard, and there it is jackpot. The highlight is this final against the enemy River. 2 out of 3 goals and the impression that he is flying over everything. Whether he’s an angel or a cyborg, in all, something other than human.
christique
It is ultimately this feeling of being something other than a human or a player that Diego Maradona will have left throughout his career. In Argentina of course, but also in Naples and finally for all those who hold football in high esteem. There will of course have been these seven seasons in the shadow of Vesuvius. In a city boiling and in love by nature, he took on the air of Christ. Some 70,000 spectators welcomed him when he presented himself to them in July 1984. And even if his first season was mixed, the Neapolitans felt that Diego Maradona is one of them. Because he comes from a humble background. Mostly perhaps because he does not consider football to be just football, but a reason in its own right to live or survive.
And what does it matter that his time at Barça ended in blood sausage by a general fight of his own doing. On the contrary, perhaps. Perhaps the Neapolitan people recognized themselves in this player who takes revenge on his executioner Adoni Goikoetxa. The Basque had a few months earlier slaughtered the ankle of the Argentine.
After the 1986 World Cup, Diego Maradona changes pace and leads all of Napoli behind him. Well helped by the recruitment, he nevertheless carries a whole people and a club on his back. In 1987, Naples won their first double which is also their first league title. His technical ease takes all defenders by surprise. His vista and his intelligence of the game make goats the best tacticians in the world. Serie A is then the best championship in the world. Diego Maradona is hands down the best player in the world.
Diego Maradona with Napoli jersey – Getty Images
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San Diego Maradona
He hadn’t needed Calcio to call him back then. During the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, he had everyone agree. Alongside an average team, the Christ Diego had let go of his cross to carry all the beauty of football. At only 25, he is a boss that nothing can stop. For the duration of a match, he is even the avenger of the national cause. When Argentina meets England, the resentments of the Falklands War are not extinguished. In the quarter-finals, he crossed the English half of the field to score one of the most beautiful goals in history. A few minutes before, he had scored a goal with his hand. History will remember these two goals as two sides of the same player. The genius and the rogue, the talent and the swindle.
What Argentina will remember is that Diego Maradona is worth a thousand soldiers, a thousand Rafales or a thousand destroyers. Diego Maradona can everything and against anyone. Argentina won its second World Cup thanks to him. It will take all his vista for Burruchaga to score in the final against the FRG the victorious goal of 3-2. It is God who leads Diego, his feet and his hands.
The idol of the mafia
With Naples, he has not said his last word and he still gleans a league title, a UEFA Cup and a Super Cup. Sanctified, it is protected by its President who sweeps away a transfer to Marseille with the back of his hand. Adored by all, the Neapolitan mafia understood all the treasure that Maradona can constitute for her. For him, she organizes everything, simplifies everything. Even his cocaine use. So that he does not happen to the Pibe badly, she provides him with the best stuff. Supreme honor, the Mafia let him covet women from Mafia families. He’s one of them. For the Neapolitans, Maradona is no longer Argentinian, he is from Naples. It is Naples. So when he has to take the decisive penalty for Argentina at the 1990 World Cup against Italy, San Paoli are behind him and encourage him. Better, he celebrates with him the qualification of Argentina at the expense of Azzuri.
A martyr who is not holy
Nothing and no one can unfortunately do nothing against Diego Maradona. Tested positive during an anti-doping control in 1991, he left Naples for Seville in 1992 and began his sporting decline. He’s 32 but he’s broken. Defenders have never been kind to him and he is in pain. Grossi, sickly consumer of cocaine and other prohibited substances, the end of his career Maradona is not up to the level of the immense player he was. Perhaps she lives up to her figure as a Christian martyr of the early hours. A martyr who is not a saint.
Diego Maradona will remain in football until the last hours of his life. Coach of the Argentina team between 2008 and 2010, he failed to give Lionel Messi his own scale. Did he want to? Coach of Emirati, Belarusian and Mexican clubs, it is finally in Argentina that he will occupy his last position. Welcomed like the messiah by a molten stadium, he prevents Gimnasia from coming down. But Diego Maradona does not go well. From heart attacks to bypass surgery, from cures to relapses, his health is undermined by his excesses. Its image also suffers from political and intimate disturbances. He had been successfully operated on this month for a subdural hematoma. He died today at age 60 of a heart attack.
Sorry, Diego Maradona’s body has stopped functioning today. Diego Maradona is still alive. We may say that to reassure ourselves. His football, his generosity and his legend will live on forever.
JMPPMJ
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