I came on here thinking someone else would have posted this already. But as they haven’t, I’ll cheekily post it first. I just love the irony as I’m not in any way a football fan.
But in all seriousness, even though I’m not a fan, Maradona was one of the few (in fact maybe the only) football player I have ever seen where I was genuinely impressed and moved by his ability. At his peak he was like a ballet dancer on the pitch, truly astonishing.
The Hand of Gone [probable Scum headline]
Probably the least surprising person ever to have died of a heart attack, but what a player.
Loved the commentary- “thank you God for football! Thank you God for Maradona!”
His second goal against Belgium was cut from a similar cloth. Not as long a run, but supreme control
Such a shame what happened to him. On the pitch, as good as Pele, off the pitch, not fit to lick his boots. I wonder if he’d have turned into the player he became had he actually signed for Sheffield United when they were offered him as a 17 year old? I think they were in Division Three at the time too.
He was a sublime player, but one of the toughest too. The treatment he used to get at the hands of cynical European defenders was appalling. It’s thought that the prescription drugs he had to take when Goitkoetxia (really not sure I’ve spelt that correctly!) shattered his legs was the start of his downfall. But if ever a team has been a one man team, Maradona was so often that man.
But the language that was shouted at the telly by me and my dad after THAT goal was shameful with my little brother and sister in the house. He soon shut us up with THAT OTHER goal!
I do wish that the expensive end of my autograph collection would stop dying whilst me and the soon to be ex-wife are still trying to sort out the financial settlement though. Sean Connery a few weeks ago, a couple of members of the 66 World Cup team and now Maradona…I just picked a couple of the (elderly, but currently alive) ones to jokingly ask how they were, but thought better of it and deleted it. I really don’t want to tempt fate.
Don’t worry mate, Bob Carolgees is in rude health.
Spit the Dog, though, is now a floor mop in a janitor’s cupboard at a large primary school.
Monstrously talented.
There are many who swear he was by far the most gifted footballer they ever saw. I’m a Pele & Cruyff person myself who will readily admit as a partisan supporter I hated the cheating little sod for Mexico 86 & the ‘hand of god’.
Having said that, he was absolutely incredible & won Napoli the championship virtually single handed. There is no way that Messi or Ronaldo could even contemplate an equivalent contribution.
He does seem to have been cursed in other aspects of life – addicted to marching powder, carrying a huge family/ entourage everywhere & a bunch of health issues that seem to have finished him at a very young age.
They’ll be distraught at Boca Juniors tonight. RIP.
Lineker said he would have done the same thing if he could get away with it. And the other goal was one of the best ever. Very sad to hate someone for one spur of the moment action especially as just about every player has cheated at one point or another *
Because he pretty much singlehandedly dragged Argentina to World Cup finals, he has to be considered very close to the best ever. All other candidates had some almost equally gifted team mates in the team. Probably Ronaldo comes closest in inspiring an ordinary international team to win championships (Euros 2016), even if Messi is arguably a better player all round he has done virtually nothing for Argentina in World Cups.
* And what on earth was Shilton doing?
The ‘hand of god’ was in 1986 – I *hated*him, don’t *hate*him.
He cheated my team out of the WC, pretty reasonable stance to take, considering.
The ‘wonder’ goal, for all of its‘ astounding quality, was against a team still visibly stunned that the first one was given.
Context is everything in football, & cliched as it is, goals completely change matches. Disallow the 1st goal, the 2nd goal never happens.
Partisanship is absolutely integral to football supporters everywhere. That’s where rivalries are honed & the desire for revenge, however long it takes, begins.
I have a great football pal still sore as hell that Joe Jordan went unpunished for a handball at Anfield in 1977, thus ( in his view) robbing Wales of their place in the 1978 WC. I don’t think any the worse of him for it, & doubt any true football fan would either.
100% agreed on the partisanship/rivalries bit. Football is a much poorer thing without it. Just look at the anodyne behind closed doors nonsense we’re watching now, or not. I do take issue with what you have to say about the 1st or 2nd goals. It wasn’t delayed trauma that impeded Reidy, Butch and the rest.
The following piece might be of interest.
https://theathletic.com/1935032/
Nice piece, Dodger- thoughtfully put together. Thanks for that.
Partisanship is important. However it goes way too far in football. As far as going to games is concerned I come from a rugby background. I have been to dozens of rugby internationals, there we drink in the pubs with the opposition fans before the game, sit next to them during the game, and celebrate, commiserate with them after the game.
Not the same in football and I have been to only one international football match and one fan died on that occasion (Wales v Romania 1993).
It’s not as if a superlative England team would have won and gone on to win the World Cup. They would likely have still lost the match, so they weren’t cheated out of anything in all likelihood. We will never know how the game might have gone except he was so far ahead of any other player on the pitch that he probably would have scored at some point. And maybe the illegal goal made England play better because they were riled, who knows?
I was mad at Joe Jordan, but doubt Wales would have come through anyway, Scotland were (much) better.
Sotland’s goal of the season and Player of the Year for each of the last 34 years
Maradona was only the best player on the pitch for the first 75 minutes, cos when John Barnes came on he ran Argentina ragged. Had he been brought on 10 minutes earlier who knows whether he could have teed Lineker up again. It would have been a bit of a robbery, mind, and Maradona in the first 75 minutes was miles better than John Barnes in the last 15, but Barnes wasn’t to care about that. At the time I remember feeling that if the game had just gone on for 5 minutes more…
Yeah, Barnes did good against a tiring Argentinian defence.
And Barnes is a much better rapper.
I hope he will be remembered as a brilliant player first of all.
He played with passion, loved playing and brought joy to many, including me. I am half Neapolitan and for a few short beautiful years, he made the city stand tall. He made my mother cry with tears of joy when the San Paolo was covered with the Italian flag following victory v Juve. I only ever saw him play once, and I will never forget it. He made Napoli champions twice, he made Argentina world champions. Without him, it would never have happened.
His private life was a tragedy, a horrible mess. Before worthies pass judgement, remember he never had the chance to grow up, and he was supporting his family when it should have been the other way round. He could only live on the football pitch where the only hangers on where his team-mates.
He brought great joy and when he played, football was indeed ‘the beautiful game’. That’s how he should be remembered.
Forget Messi and Ronaldo. Maradona was the greatest ever. The pitches, the tackling, the rules were different then. He dragged average teams to greatness at club and international level. Complete shithouse but the greatest footballer ever. Bar none
For a little guy he had immense strength and was very hard to knock off the ball.
I went to Buenos Aires once and took a taxi trip to La Boca. As we approached
the port area there was rioting and tear gas in the streets – the tickets had gone on sale for the weekend game between Boca and River Plate and the rioters were those who couldn’t get tickets.
They take their football very seriously there and Maradonna’s image was everywhere to be seen along with Gardel (the founder of Tango) and Eva Peron.
I have absolutely no problem with the ‘Hand of God’ thing – it was cheeky, spur of the moment and I doubt that he ever thought he would get away with it. It was the responsibility of the officials to discount it accordingly. Like others have said, he should be remembered for his sublime, transcendent skills and sheer force of personality which was able to inspire such remarkable achievements.
I went off him after “Into the Groove”.
You’ve got the wrong glasses on again.
“Controversial” said the BBC.
Not outside of England he isn’t.
Well failing a drug test during the World Cup finals did invite some controversy.
Leave John Motson outta this!
No, that was Frank Bough!
Not the case he wasn’t controversial. To Italian football fans who are not from Naples, he became public enemy no.1 during the 1990 World Cup.
I haven’t been on here in a long time, but Diego Maradona has died and I need to write something about him or I won’t feel right.
I know Maradona enjoys an – ahem – mixed legacy in this country. He’s a cheat, he’s a drug addict, he’s an embarrassment, etc. What I would like to do here is to acknowledge all those things and attempt to explain why, despite all that, he remains so important, so magnificent.
We can start with the on-pitch brilliance, with which we’re probably all by now long since familiar. That low centre of gravity, the ball skills, the vision, the leadership. Evading half the England team as they attempt to hack him to bits; punching a hole clean through the middle of the Belgian defence; juggling the ball during a pre-match warm up. It’s all been very well documented and I’m sure it will be the go-to for eulogies in the days ahead.
What I think has sometimes been overlooked is his sheer physical bravery. Playing in an era where players were strong enough to do each other real damage, playing the way he did on pitches often little better that potato fields; he was as tough as nails. This video, in particular, is an unforgettable series of clips of Diego riding challenges that seem to be intended to maim or kill him outright.
Then there are his achievements. Obviously, the World Cup, yes Napoli in Serie A and Europe. It’s a singular body of work we will probably never see again in football; the best player on the planet sat in the middle of a side that’s not really at his level, willing them on to greatness through sheer force of personality. Again, all well documented.
What I would like to focus on here are the two elements of Maradona that I feel are less commonly spoken about; the two elements which have always made him significant to me, and many millions of others across the planet.
First and foremost, Maradona conducted the single most glorious affair with the ball that the game will ever see. It’s instructive here to make the first of what will probably be several comparisons to Leo Messi, for which I can only apologise.
Watch Messi with a football; it’s his pal, trundling along by his side like a faithful dog, off on an adventure with its master, loyal and obedient. Maradona was different; you watch him with the ball – playing, warming up, goofing around in front of the cameras – and there’s an intimacy that simply doesn’t exist with any other player. There’s a finesse to his touch and a fascination in his eyes that belies the many thousands of hours he spent as a child and a young man trying to understand everything he could about this object. It’s visibly the geographic centre of his universe and he was devoted to it, even as he grew older and less able to play.
This is why many of the best clips of Diego are the ones where it’s just him and a football, and the best of all are where he doesn’t seem to know the camera is there. Doing keepie ups with his shins, juggling with his shoulders higher than I can kick a ball, backspinning it with the underside of his feet so it returns to him. It’s a love story; a dance, glorious and balletic, and his magic was never more fully in effect than in those moments, lost in a reverie. It’s the reason the famous footage of his warm up to Love Is Life is arguably THE iconic Diego moment, even more than the match footage. You can see the eternal child in him as he stretches out and explores the frontiers of what he and the ball can do together, and it humanises him even at the apex of his brilliance.
If my affinity for Maradona is rooted in Diego the Lover, let me say a word here too for Diego the Fighter, because that second aspect remains a huge huge part of his impact, and I don’t think it’s always well understood in the UK.
Half my family are Argentinean, and it’s a country I’ve spent a fair bit of time in. It’s a complicated place, and a complex culture. Football is a religion there, and Maradona remains a God, in a way that Messi, for all his superabundance of not-of-this-Earth talent, never will. Why is that the case, and why is the Hand of God incident, so central to the Maradona mythos, viewed so differently there, petty nationalism aside?
Three main reasons, as far as I can see.
The first is a high tolerance for what can only really be described as cheating. Argentinean culture is often, at its heart, Italian culture; one needs only look at the architecture, the food or even the people to know that. The country, as currently constituted, was largely built by Italian immigrants, and they retain that sneaking Italian admiration for achievements conducted off the books, so to speak.
Maradona himself was quite clear that beating the English in the manner he did was infinitely preferable to having done so by fair means; locally the goal in question was perceived of evidence of his daring, his street smarts. For what it’s worth, it’s always seemed to me that English football lives in something of a state of delusion as to its own moral rectitude; if the first goal was an example of Maradona’s low cunning, it’s quite well documented that Terry Butcher et al attempted to prevent the second by chopping their opponent down at the knees. There’s cheating and then there’s cheating, of course.
The second reason is Maradona’s background. He came from nothing. From actual dirt poverty, on a level that probably hasn’t existed in England within living memory. While the English will always love a working class hero, in Argentina that impulse is all the stronger; it’s an essential part of the Maradona mythos that he climbed from nothing and showed deference to no one. In that sense, his flaws only add to his appeal – he’s a bona fide man of the people who never once pretended to be anything more than he was; a street kid with street kid flaws who happened to have been gifted the soul of a poet.
The final reason is, for me, the most poignant of the three. National sentiment over the Falklands/Las Malvinas is relatively poorly understood outside Argentina. There’s a tremendous amount of pain and anger, commonly assumed to be directed against the English. But that’s not the case, in my experience. Spend some time in Argentina, talk to the locals and it becomes apparent, even at a distance of 40 years, that the Falklands conflict is a gaping hole in the nation’s pride. But there’s also a deep wellspring of love for England and English culture; it’s a nation that plays polo, (largely) reveres the monarchy, rabidly follows English football and loudly proclaims itself to be spiritually European, much to the chagrin of its neighbours. They’re no fans of Thatcher, but – hey – they’re not alone on that front.
What needs to be understood is how the Falklands conflict looks from the Argentinean perspective. A military government sent their boys, some essentially kids, into war with the English with inadequate training and equipment. Care packages from home were requested and did not reach their intended recipients, being raided instead by the military. This, in addition to some of the terrible treatment already afforded to the wider populace by said government. The pain and anger of the Falklands conflict isn’t an unfinished dialogue between Argentina and England, it’s an unfinished dialogue that Argentina is still working through with itself. You can draw a direct line from that suffering and humiliation to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, it’s all the same pain.
Why does this matter for Maradona? Because the Hand of God, taken in context of the elements above, represented for Argentina and for Argentineans a moment of profound depuration, wherein they were able to cast off some of their pain and degradation. He struck a blow for all those who had suffered; not just in the conflict itself, but at the hands of the junta. He gave a release to the great unspoken tension within the nation’s life, and reinserted some pride into the national character. That he did it by cheating made it all the sweeter; like a thief in the night, he stole back for Argentina a dignity thought lost. And he followed it up by scoring probably the greatest goal the sport will ever see.
People in this country talk endlessly about David Beckham’s 2001 free kick against Greece. Beckham’s goal prevented England from having to go to a play off to qualify for the 2002 World Cup Finals. Against Ukraine. Those were the stakes. It’s still a big deal nearly two decades later.
Try to imagine, for a moment, what that 1986 quarter final meant to the people of Argentina. It’s David Beckham, Robin Hood and Winston Churchill rolled into one, with the additional bonus of our hero having unapologetically emerged from absolutely grinding poverty. Obviously, he didn’t stop there either – he was absolutely electric in each of the knockout games, and won the trophy virtually single handed. The sheer romance of it all is nigh on unbearable.
I know there is the other view of Maradona; the drugs, the weight gain, the bad behaviour in public. He’s an easy figure to mock, utterly fallible and brought to Earth by his appetites, in every sense. But he never pretended to be anything other than what he was, never really bothered to hide his flaws. He delivered such joy to so many people, and – at his best – he was so full of life and possessed of such enormous character; he genuinely made you believe that anything was possible.
He also played the game with his heart on his sleeve, for good or ill. Less a smoothly calibrated professional of the type that dominates the modern game, more an overgrown schoolboy living out his dreams on the playground and then waking up to find they’d all come true.
That’s the Argentina end of things. We could talk about Napoli too, but I’m far less equipped to speak to that, and the eponymous documentary released last year covers it very well.
Diego Maradona’s life is a modern-day fairy tale. A fairy tale with bucketloads of substance abuse, but a fairy tale nonetheless. It’s the reason that you will find a picture of him on or around every bar in Buenos Aires, the reason his image is plastered all over Napoli and the reason I worshipped him as a child. He’s the representative of a genuine underclass, hailing from a nation whose best days are probably behind it, who by brilliance and force of personality upset the natural order of things and delivered catharsis to his people in the country of Argentina and the city of Naples. Not only that, but he did so while playing with a grace and style that were and remain all his own.
There will be other footballers, brilliant footballers, who will eclipse his deeds. Messi arguably already has. Others who are far more professional, whose careers stretch longer and who keep it together better. There will never be another player with a talent ceiling as high as Diego’s. There will never be another player with an ability to bend an entire tournament to their will as Diego did when at his best. There will never be another player whose peak will be so stratospherically high from both a football and cultural perspective. There will never be another player who will make a football dance the way he did.
They’ve just announced three days of national mourning in Argentina. Hopefully the above paints a picture as to why; it’s the least he deserves.
Farewell, Diego Armando Maradona. Thank you for lighting up my childhood, for your courage, your daring and the sheer grace and beauty of your play. You made me love football all the more, made my dreams a little deeper and my soul a little less earthbound.
Great post.
You’ve made me want to go and watch the 1986 World Cup all over again now, except cheering for a different team. I think what you have written there will knock spots off anything we could read from any of the news agencies or in any of tomorrow’s papers.
Agreed
God I’ve missed you. Since you left it’s been like the aftermath of Take That splitting up round here. And now it’s like when Robbie rejoined, albeit briefly and in holographic form. Not that your absence has been entirely without its benefits. There was, after all, a brief period after your departure when I was undisputedly acknowledged as the most ravashingly beautiful male Afterworder. Then, alas, Martin Hairnet posted a selfie. Still, they were good times while they lasted and I look upon them with a mixture of saudade and… ooh, gotta go, pasta’s boiling.
Nice one Dan.
Dan? DAN? That’s a bit personal, n’est-ce pas? How would you like it if someone came on here and started calling you Marie Christine? Eh? Eh? Answer me that, before you go throwing privacy from the balcony with your cavalier familiarities.
great post
Wonderful read Bingo. This deserves a wide readership.
Do your Frank Spencer.
Nice one – I reckon that writing – both informative an d personal – deserves a wider audience. The 5 minutes on the end of the News tonight will be the 2 goals from 1986, the mad face to camera in 1990, and some sundry blurry clips of Barcelona and Napoli.
This above is a much better eulogy
That is PRECISELY what the BBC news piece contained. Do you, perchance, work in the newsroom?
Superb post. Simply superb.
Thanks Bingo, that’s brilliant. What do you do for an encore?
Nothing I can usefully add except to agree with those who have talked of his brilliance – without question once of the very greatest.
Great post Bingo. Also I think my first encounter with the word depuration. I had to look it up
@bingo-little You’ve summed it up brilliantly for me. I would have just used a bold font on the cheat and drug references to make me feel a little better. But, as much as I would like to despise him, he’s far too good a player for that.
My friend David once sent me a postcard with that image of Maradona staring down a tv camera after scoring a goal at the world cup. He was about to fail a drug test. It shows in the photo and it sums up everything that is great and terrible about him for me.
Wonderful post, Bingo.
Part of me thinks his biggest mistake was scoring in a penalty shoot-out, Argentina v Italy, 1990 World Cup semi final at, of all places, Naples. Up to that point he was deity in Southern Italy, protected and indulged by the Mafia. Within months, his phone was tapped and his addictions humiliatingly revealed. There was nowhere to go after that, other than back to Argentina.
Very interesting article about that:
https://www.football-italia.net/118913/throwback-maradona-pits-naples-vs-italy
It’s seems unthinkable that the great Maradona was only seventh in line to take a penalty!
It’s pacing. Like saving a really great track for the beginning of side two.
Well, it was a shame that it was the desire to talk about such a sad loss that brought you back here, Bingo. But that was a real tour-de-force. Very enjoyable.
I particularly appreciated hearing about Maradonna from your Argentinian perspective.
Very glad you popped in.
Thanks @BingoLittle that’s a great read. On a slightly related subject have you read the story on the lines on the posts in the 1978 finals? It came up on Twitter recently. Fascinating. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/football/in-bed-with-maradona/2017/jul/05/1978-world-cup-argentina-political-protest-goalposts
Argentina beating Holland in 1978 made me really sad. I still feel sad when I’m reminded about it.
But Maradona wasn’t playing.
Maradona wasn’t in that team but the great Osvaldo Ardiles was. He was my favourite player in that World Cup, and I can still recall my absolute disbelief when he signed for Spurs. One of the club’s finest players in my lifetime. He’s been tweeting very warmly about Maradona tonight.
And Maradona wore a Spurs shirt for one night at Ossie’s testimonial against Inter.
Strange, that was my favourite World Cup final. That Argentina team had flare.
Kind of…the junta-repression background was horrible, but that team was pretty great – Kempes, Luque, Passarella et al. The ’78 Dutch team were a long way short of the ’74 masters (SWIDT?). Now, that defeat to West Germany was heartbreaking…
But Rensenbrink hit the post in injury time with the scores level. 2 inches from winning the World Cup, and without Cruyff.
@dai
Exactly! I did know Maradona wasn’t in the team, it was more a reflection on Holland especially, as others say, it followed the defeat 4 years earlier.
Interesting perspective on Argentina.
From our point of view …
1. Could the Falklands War be seen to have had an equally negative impact on this country?
2. And the Beckham goal … what the f*** was that all about?
Within a year the team England “pipped” to the World Cup (Germany) had reached the Final of the very same World Cup, and have subsequently won the World Cup … and Greece, the team England fortuitously limped home against that day, in the very next International Tournament in 2004, won it, after beating the hosts (Portugal) twice, the very same team that Beckham’s hapless England couldn’t beat once at the same tournament.
Have any of the great unwashed cottoned on yet?
Whatever you do, don’t let them vote on the E.U., ffs.
For all the talk of cheating, if you watch his highlight reel you can see how he skips through dozens of murderous lunges which would have led to a penalty, free kick or even a card; but he’s not interesting in that kind of ‘low cunning,’ he just wants to sail past and put the ball in the net the proper, glorious way. That is perhaps why no one will match him – they’d have gone down at the first brush of bootlaces and stood up waving an imaginary Red. But then of course he did that as well, when they caught him.
I hated him with vehemence after that ‘incident’.
But how long can you hate someone who at the time was the greatest exponent of a sport you loved.
He was probably the second greatest footballer ever, in my honest opinion Pele is the greatest footballer ever.
I felt sorry for Maradona in his ‘white powder’ years, he was obviously surrounded by the wrong people. For me the memory of the man will always be tarnished because of that time.
It’s always a pity when someone who was as gifted as Maradona passes.
R.I.P. Dieguito and when you see God give him back his hand.
Just thought I’d post a link to a wonderful article in today’s Guardian, which is written by Maradona’s former teammate Jorge Valdano (he scored in the 86 World Cup final). It’s beautifully worded and worth reading just to see an ex-footballer making an analogy with the Odyssey.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/nov/26/maradona-the-footballer-had-no-flaws-maradona-the-man-was-a-victim
Really good piece – thanks for sharing.
It makes me wonder about how peripheral vision varies from person to person. Even seeing 1% more than most people might give that person a distinct advantage. You also have to be good at football though.
It may be the peripheral vision; I think it’s a little more, which is the ability to process the information and do something with it.
They say that the best players look like they have all the time in the world. I believe it’s because of how fast they process the data they’re getting.
I would agree with that.
My brother in law (who played football to an FA Cup 4th round level) has said to me he always knows what he’s going to do with the ball before he gets it. Then he’s just concentrating on doing it when the ball comes to him. Me, I’m worrying about that, worrying about my touch and then, often, worrying about how I get the ball back. I suspect the really great players have that in spades along with the ability to do it consistently well.
I have played with a few quality players. They know where to be, they know what they are going to do and then do it brilliantly. It’s wonderful to be on a pitch at the same time as players like that – they really do make mediocre players like myself play better. Well, less mediocre.
The clamour of the public once you’ve established yourself special in Sport or Music must be immense.
The All Blacks presented the Argentinian rugby team with a no 10 Maradona NZ shirt before their game last night.
In other news, 3 Argentinian funeral home workers posed for thumbs-up selfies of themselves with the deceased maestro.
On the funeral workers. I suspect Maradona would forgive the men their mistakes.
I watched the documentary on Channel 4 last night. It was completely fascinating. It’s one of those sporting films that doesnt need the watcher to be a sports fan. I can’t judge someone who lived with that level of fame, I wouldn’t last a day. The Napoli phase of his life is worth a film in itself. Mafia, drugs, women, money, coercion it has everything. The football footage was brutal to watch. Despite the treatment he recieved and the pitches he played on shown close up from the snapped ankle in Barcelona, Terry Fenwicks elbow (what comes around…) at the world cup, the Italian defenders hacking away constantly he just kept going, kept coming back for more. Lionel Messi is clearly a genius but he doesnt compare to Diego. Bingo’s post and that documentary have elevated my respect not only of the player but also the man. We can choose to judge him but he lived a life beyond our imagination.