Maradona was a cheat, a drug user and a loose cannon but no one can deny his football genius
HERO
THE incontrovertible and inconvenient truth is that the man is a proven cheat. Not just on the field of play. You may be aware that he once failed a drugs test, too.
He also instigated an on-field riot in what proved to be his final match for Barcelona. On another occasion, he fired an air rifle at journalists.
Then there was his improbable denial for years that he was the biological father of his son — just one of many outstanding such cases. To say nothing of his cheek-by-jowl relationship with the Mafia while domiciled in Naples, or his predilection for narcotics.
Throw in the fact that he is also a pretty hopeless football manager, there is certainly much not to admire about Diego Armando Maradona.
For those of us who routinely castigate journeymen for trying to con officials with their theatrics, there’s a certain degree of hypocrisy involved in overlooking the Argentine’s myriad character flaws as we view the bigger picture.
How do we reconcile ourselves with this moral quandary? It’s quite simple, really. Few, perhaps no footballer, in the history of the game ever scaled the heights he did in his pomp.
For those of us who witnessed him blow through Spain, Mexico and Italy like a hurricane in the 1980s, nothing that happened subsequently could ever truly diminish what he did with the ball at his feet. Rightly or wrongly, everything else is just white noise.
There’s often something that annoys me about his crowning moment. Not, in fact, anything Maradona himself did as he slalomed fully 66 yards towards the England goal in the unforgiving heat of the Azteca that day in June 1986.
It’s more the fact that what should be ten seconds of unadulterated genius are often curtailed by those sat in editing suites; too frequently the images of the goal start only when his 5ft 5in frame is on its way over the halfway line and clicking into top gear.
In the interests of accuracy, the greatest goal in the history of football starts when Maradona collects a short pass from Hector Enrique and executes a beautiful spin and drag-back inside his own half. You don’t look at the Taj Mahal with one eye closed or skip the first few bars of Mozart. This is footballing art.
What happened thereafter scarcely needs repeating. By the time Peter Beardsley, Peter Reid, Terry Butcher (twice) and Terry Fenwick have been turned to stone, a majestic feint to deceive Peter Shilton is all that’s required to complete the most extraordinary solo goal we will ever see.
How we can say that for certain? Quite simply because no goal could possibly ever be scored in a game which not only had such significant sporting implications but also resonated so much politically given the Falklands War of four years previously.
‘You have to say that’s magnificent,’ was Barry Davies’ note of magnanimity as Maradona wheeled away in celebration. ‘Like a cosmic kite, which planet did you come from?’ said the BBC man’s South American colleague Victor Hugo Morales.
Even for teenagers looking on agog in their living rooms in Scotland that day, there was an instant appreciation that the events we were witnessing would echo for the rest of our days.
Just four minutes earlier, the Hand of God had intervened to put Argentina one goal ahead in the quarter-final. That Maradona had used a raised arm to beat Shilton to a loose ball and guide it into an unguarded net seemed obvious to everyone in the 114,580 crowd aside from Tunisian referee
Ali Bin Nasser. The fact Gary Lineker reduced the deficit to one goal with nine minutes remaining only served to rub salt into the wound. Almost 34 years on, it’s still smarting.
But the nuclear fallout from the first goal never could take away from what Maradona — then aged 25 — produced throughout that wonderful tournament.
He played every minute of every game, scoring five times and claiming five assists. His goal in the semi-final against Belgium was another extraordinary feat of skill, balance and accuracy with his pass for Jorge Burruchaga to claim victory over West Germany in the final simply sublime. Sport does not always allow its very best to perform to their optimum level when they are at their prime.
But Maradona that summer could be classed beside Muhammad Ali defeating Cleveland Williams in ’66, John McEnroe destroying Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon in ’84 and Tiger Woods’ 15-shot victory at the 2000 US Open. Each one, a display for the ages.
It also had that most cherished of ingredients in any sporting story. A sense of redemption.
Four years previously, the world had watched Argentina fail to defend their trophy in Spain. Maradona, who had just
completed his then-record transfer from Boca Juniors to Barcelona, had managed to guide his side through to the second phase.
But as the trophy was ripped from their grasp in a humiliating 3-0 loss to Brazil, the enduring image was of a bearded Maradona being sent off for a woeful challenge on Batista. His shame in Spain added another gilded layer to the triumph in Mexico.
Would Argentina have won the trophy for the second time without him? We cannot say for sure but informed opinion suggests their chances would have been between slim and zero. Never before had one man led a team and dominated a tournament quite like that.
The same applies to what we subsequently witnessed in Naples. Before Maradona arrived at Napoli in 1984, no southern Italian team had ever won the league title.
While the Neapolitans did boast the famous ‘Ma-Gi-Ca’ frontline comprising of Maradona, Bruno Giordano and Careca, the part their No 10 played in winning the
Scudetto for the first time in 1987 and then again in 1990 was astonishing.
He scored 115 times for the club during his time to become the club’s leading all-time scorer, a record which was only recently overtaken by Marek Hamsik and Dries Mertens.
‘Maradona, when he was on form, there was almost no way of stopping him,’ stated the legendary AC Milan defender Franco Baresi.
It’s a great pity that Channel 4’s coverage of Football Italia did not begin until a year after Maradona had returned to Spain to sign for Sevilla.
But, mercifully, his exploits in gunning down the northern powerhouses like Milan, Inter and Juventus are now widely available online.
As for the off-field story which began with 75,000 fans welcoming him to the San Paolo right through to his increased dependency on cocaine and his alleged friendship with senior figures in the Camorra, last year’s eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is a truly spell-binding account.
Even for seasoned Maradona watchers, some of the previously unseen footage of press conferences, parties and the sheer unrelenting chaos that was those seven years is pure gold.
To do justice to his 59 years on this planet would require a piece of cinematography so lengthy that it would make Ben-Hur feel like a truncated B-movie.
A debut for Argentinos Juniors ten days before his 16th birthday. Winning the title with Boca Juniors. The first Barcelona player to be applauded by fans of Real Madrid. The first player in history to twice break the world transfer record. Having his ankle broken by Andoni Goikoetxea. The mass brawl in the 1984 Copa del Rey final which sealed his exit from the Nou Camp.
Then there are small matters of the UEFA Cup and the Coppa Italia to go with the two titles he won at Napoli, his outrageous pass for Claudio Caniggia as Argentina eliminated Brazil at Italia ’90, his call for ‘true Neapolitans’ to support the South Americans rather than Italy in the semi-final — an action that saw the blanket of protection around him abruptly removed.
And what to say of the failed drug test at USA ’94, his neardeath experience, his friendships with the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his son Raul and his two-fingered salutes from the stand as his country beat Nigeria in the 2018 World Cup?
It is truly extraordinary that despite a toxic amalgam of reckless excess and near insanity running throughout his life story, the principle narrative of a genius whose triumphs transcended his sport remains intact.