The two-faced god of football who never
OLD AGE was never an option for Diego Armando Maradona. He was the worst sort of child, someone who never grew up.
The only place he felt a sense of responsibility was on the pitch. The only time he did not let anyone down was when he had a ball at his feet. Or his hand.
It is too easy to say he had a childlike quality. He was more like a regressed, indulged teenager who never quite realised where the boundaries were.
Football is a haven against adulthood for us all, though; a place where players and fans can act like kids. Maradona was the essence of mischievous adolescence.
How good was he? No one was better. Playing was the only outlet for his maturity. He was so outrageously talented he could win a game on his own.
But if he thought a three-yard pass to the left back was better for the team, he would play that ball.
When he decided the only option was to beat an entire defence, he could do that too. With ease.
The infamous “Hand of God” incident colours English opinions on the Argentinian genius. His two goals in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal against England illustrated different sides of his personality: the cheat and the champion.
It is sometimes forgotten how Bobby Robson’s team stormed back into the game in the last 15 minutes in the Azteca 34 years ago.
Argentina were exhausted and on the back foot in the closing moments and Gary Lineker came very close to levelling the scores.
It is a tempting notion that, had Lineker scored, England might have gone on to win not just the game but the tournament. John Barnes shut that theory down.
“If we’d have equalised, Maradona would have got the ball, gone up the pitch and scored,”
Barnes said, dismissing the theory that England had any chance. “And if we’d have equalised again, he would have done it again.”
The greatest feat of
Maradona’s career was not winning the World Cup but leading Napoli to the Serie A title twice. Italian football was at its peak in the second half of the 1980s and early nineties but the Argentinian towered over the league.
Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan are often spoken about as the greatest club side in history. They were brilliant, grownup and cynical. They could not stop Maradona, even in the season they won their second consecutive European Cup.
Naples, a city of urchins, embraced him. He had that
backstreet,