Self-destructive soccer star dazzled world
Legendary career marred by drug and health issues
Diego Armando Maradona, the mop-haired boy from a Buenos Aires slum who dribbled and dazzled his way to world fame, becoming one of the greatest soccer players of all time but also one of the most self-destructive, has died.
Never far from the spotlight he chased with such fury, Maradona died on Wednesday from a heart attack, the Associated Press has confirmed. Maradona had been plagued by health issues in recent years, recently suffering a subdural hematoma, which required brain surgery. He was 60.
As the news of Maradona’s death circulated around the world Wednesday, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez called for three days of national mourning while UEFA, soccer’s governing body in Europe, announced there would be a minute of silence before its Champions League and Europa League games this week.
Soccer stars past and present took to social media to say goodbye.
Pele, the Brazilian legend and perhaps the greatest player of all time, wrote on Twitter that he “lost a great friend and the world lost a legend.… Oneday, I hopewe can play ball together in the sky.”
Cristiano Ronaldo, the five-time world player of the year from Portugal who currently stars for Juventus, tweeted, “Today I say goodbye to a friend and the world says goodbye to an eternal genius.”
Like that other famous Argentine export, the tango, Maradona brought flair, passion and an undeniable sense of darkness to his sport and his life. On the field, few could match his artistry, skill and creativity, but he could also be a devious, angry player. Off the field, he was a volatile man of prodigious appetites whose excesses often landed him in the hospital.
During a professional career that began on a Buenos Aires field when he was 15, Maradona scored hundreds of goals, many of them the stuff of legend, including two
in a single match against England in the 1986 World Cup. The first is considered by many the most notorious goal in the history of the sport, and the second among the most celebrated.
His career reached its summit when he led Argentina’s national team to victory in the 1986 World Cup. But drug abuse and other acts of self-destruction tainted his final years as a player and he retired in 1997, just a whisper of his former self.
Maradona played 91 games for the Argentine national team and was a star for teams in Italy and Spain. He played his last World Cup game in Foxboro, Mass., in 1994, escorted off the field for a drug test he would fail.
One of eight children of a laborer who had migrated to the city from rural Corrientes province, Maradona was born Oct. 30, 1960, in a “villa miseria,” or slum, in the suburban Buenos Aires community of Villa Fiorito.
He was first named to Argentina’s national team in 1977, when he was 16. But coach Cesar Luis Menotti failed to name him to the squad that won the 1978 World
Cup, which Argentina hosted. Maradona was crushed.
“I knew he was a great player, who was going to have the chance to play in many more World Cups,” Menotti would say years afterward.
In 1982, after leading Boca Juniors to a league championship, Maradona signed with the Spanish club Barcelona. It was there, friends say, that he got his first taste of cocaine.
“I was, I am now, and I have always been a drug addict,” he would acknowledge years later.
But on the field, his powers only seemed to grow. After fighting repeatedly with Barcelona management, he moved to the Italian club Napoli, scoring a series of remarkable goals that quickly endearedhimtothe notoriously fickle Italian fans.
In the 1986 World Cup, played in Mexico, the full range of his skills was on display. During the tournament he scored five goals in leading Argentina to its second World Cup victory, but he will always be remembered for the two he scored in a quarterfinal match against England. Passions were
high for the game, played just three years after Britain defeated Argentina in the Falklands War.
With the game scoreless, Maradona rose up and challenged the English goalkeeper Peter Shilton for a high pass. Maradona punched the ball with his fist into the goal, a blatant violation of the rules seen by nearly everyone on the field but the referee.
Asked afterward if he had used his hand, Maradona said the goal had been scored “by the hand of God.”
Five minutes later, Maradona scored another. Taking the ball in his own half of the field, he dribbled and weaved past most of the English team, then tumbled to the ground as he fired a shot that beat Shilton. In a poll conducted two decades later by soccer’s international governingbody, FIFA, it was selected the greatest goal in the history of the World Cup.
“Today he scored one of the most brilliant goals you will ever see,” English coach Bobbyrobson said after the game. “The first goal was dubious. The second goal was a miracle.”
Argentina went on to beat England 2-1.
“It was as if we had beaten a country, more than just a soccer team,” Maradona mused in his autobiography.
A week later, when Argentina defeated West Germany 3-2 in the championship game, he stormed off the field and into the locker room shouting obscenities; for Maradona, victory was always tinged with the lingering anger he felt for his rivals and detractors.
Still at the peak of his powers, he inspired Napoli to its first Italian league titles in 1987 and 1990. He married childhood sweetheart Claudia Villafane in 1989, but would admit later to being unfaithful to her. In1991he was again suspended for 15 months after testing positive for cocaine.
Noticeablyoverweight, hewent on a crash diet before the 1994 World Cup, hosted by the United States. But after scoring two goals in three games, he failed a drug test for ephedrine, a performance-enhancing drug. He was kicked out of the World Cup and banned from the sport for 15 months.
Maradona eventually returned to play for his old Argentine club team, Boca Juniors, where he retired in 1997.
Shortly after his 2004 divorce, Maradona began another downward spiral and was hospitalized after a drug overdose and again for alcohol poisoning.
In 2018, Maradona - whose gait had now turned to a shuffle and once crisp voice to amumble - was hired to coach the Dorados, a professional team based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, in the heart of drug country. The only person more famous thanmaradona in Sinaloa was Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the legendary drug kingpin.
But Maradona, silencing critics again, made it work. hobbled by knee injuries and using a cane as he shuffled about, Maradona managed to take a young team buried deep in Mexico’s second division to the playoff final, where it lost by a goal in overtime.
“Maradona is the synthesis of Argentina,“suggested Guillermo Oliveta, president of the Argentina Marketing Association. ”He came from dire poverty and went up so quickly in social status. And then he crashed, just like the country.”