Artist an poet with the touch of a & the heart of a pirate
KEITH JACKSON PAYS A PERSONAL TRIBUTE TO A FOOTBALL SUPERHERO
LET’S be honest, when the news came, it did not arrive as a shock.
The truth is he did well to hang on for as long as his 60th birthday.
And yet even though we all knew it would happen – and probably one day soon – yesterday afternoon the whole world seemed to swivel off its axis just for a split second.
As if, somewhere up there in the grey skies above, the little street urchin had just sold St Peter a dummy to shimmy his way in through the big gates.
Heaven might never be the same place again, of course. But then neither will the football world Diego Maradona has just left behind.
The sense of sadness then which washed over the game felt almost palpable across the globe.
Yes, there was even a lump in English throats – even though to this day they had never quite found it in themselves to forgive him for his greatest, most perfect moment of skulduggery.
He called it the Hand of God. Well, now there are three of them up there and if the Big Fella is a football fan he’ll have used his own to applaud this troubled scoundrel across the threshold and into his rightful position.
Yes, Maradona the man might not have earned such divine adulation. But Maradona the footballer deserved nothing less.
On June 2, 1979 around 62,000 of us had the chance to pay homage to this young marvel in the making who, at the age of just 18, had broken into Argentina’s international side like an emerging superhero, only a year after this team had itself won the World Cup.
So huge was the excitement about this teenage phenomenon that Hampden was packed that day. I was there too, a wide-eyed six-year-old accompanied by my grandpa.
Sat together on those rickety old wooden bench seats in the main stand, coming under the spell of the greatest magician either of us – or anyone else inside the famous old stadium that day for that matter – had ever seen. I felt like the lucky one. I was getting in on this earlier than the rest.
It was also the only time I can ever remember leaving the old place not in the slightest bit upset that Scotland had just been so soundly beaten.
In normal circumstances, such a defeat would have reduced the young Jacko to tears. Come to think of it, they still do.
But not on that day. The sense of wonderment at what we had just seen was so overwhelming that the 3-1 result was rendered an irrelevance.
From that first glimpse of true greatness, no future opportunity to watch this sporting wonder weaving his wizardly spells would be passed up. It was a source of great shame the chance only ever came about every four years but, then again, it was always on the greatest stage of them all. And he lit up those World Cup finals like no other.
There was, in between times, a truly tragic backstory unfolding during his years at Barcelona and Napoli but none of that seemed to matter when he had a ball at his feet.
There was an unearthly joy to be had in watching Maradona play, which was mesmeric and unmatched until relatively recently when Lionel Messi picked up his countryman’s baton.
This was not a football player we were watching. This was an artist with the touch of a poet and the heart of a pirate.
At times during Mexico 86, Italia 90 and even the USA in 94, when he bowed out in disgrace as only he could, it didn’t even feel like football we were watching.
It was other-worldly stuff. It had no place on this planet.
But the real world of Diego was a darker, far more macabre place than any of us mere mortals could imagine.
A recently released and fittingly brilliant film documents those troubled years spent doing drugs with notorious gangland figures in Naples as Maradona’s personal life began spiralling out of all control.
And yet, as thoroughly chaotic as it had all become, his love for
playing football – and representing his country – never seemed to be the slightest bit distracted by it all.
And it only really registered with the rest of the world in 1994 when he returned to the international stage to put on a virtuoso display – scoring a goal against Greece which, like so much of his work, had to be seen to be believed.
But it was his bulging-eyed celebration in front of a TV camera that forced the penny to drop. He looked as high as a kite and that’s precisely what he was. Again, it was hardly a surprise when news emerged of a failed drugs test after the next game with Nigeria.
He left the tournament in disgrace. But even this great stain seemed to add another layer of mystique and bedevilment to his story. The ultimate in lovable rogues.
So when he returned to Hampden in 2008 as Argentina’s manager it was, of course, an occasion which could not possibly be missed.
Excitedly, I attended his prematch press conference in Glasgow’s Radisson Hotel. It was standingroom only by the time he arrived flanked by a hairy, heavily tattooed entourage which would have looked more at place on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean than it did here in a packed function suite just off Argyle Street.
The mischievous glint in his eye was still there. Matched only by that of the huge sparkler dangling from his earlobe.
But the joy of seeing it all up close had gone, replaced by a profound sense of sadness that the great Maradona had been reduced to this.
A sideshow in serious danger of turning into a freakshow before it would ever be brought to an end and put out of its misery.
That end came yesterday when Maradona was released from a life over which he had long since lost his grip.
If there is a heaven then there will be a ball waiting for him in it. And never again will he have to lose control.