I watched the Asif Kapadia documentary on Maradona on my flight back to Singapore at the start of the pandemic. It was pretty entertaining. The thing that struck me most about Maradona was that he was a flawed talent at Barcelona, transferred to Napoli for a world record sum of money (still a fraction of what a much lesser talent might command these days but a world record). Napoli for whatever reason wanted to splash out the cash, and then he drove Napoli on to become Serie A champions twice, and winner of the UEFA cup. And this was when Napoli had to beat the great AC Milan team which had Gullit-Rikjaard-Van Basten.
Diego Maradona was a genuine bona fide third world superstar. I don’t think there are many of these around anymore. Bob Marley was one, Pele and Garrincha were superstars. These days, you can have people from humble backgrounds, but they might have grown up in soccer academies in Europe. Messi would probably not have had an upbringing too different from his mates Xavi and Iniesta. But Maradona grew up in Argentina and probably understood the grinding poverty. And even then, he was some kind of golden boy, whose talent manifested at a young age, and people probably saw it as some kind of ticket out of their drudgery.
The problem with him is that he came from a poor background, and he’s like the guy who won the lottery, and everybody knew he won the lottery. So there were many members of his entourage, and many hangers on. And they were treating him like some kind of golden calf. He was outrageously gifted. He associated with all sorts of people in Naples, including a few with underworld connections. Being the extrovert that he was, he never shied from anybody’s company. He was practically a patron saint of Naples. He managed a lifestyle where he would play a match on the weekend, party until Wednesday, then sweat everything off and go back to the gym and regain fitness for the weekend match. I think this was possible back in the day when elite clubs had fewer obligations to play weekday matches in European competitions.
The greatest thing about Maradona was when he was at his peak, he was the complete footballer. He was fast, tough, good at dribbling, passing, shooting. He had vision, and was basically a midfield general (albeit one who ran things further up the pitch). And the impression that I got was that more than anything, he was a great teammate. He would stick up for you, deliver the ball on a platter for you, run the show (and you could just play your game and know that somebody else would get you out of a tricky situation). He was not only a great footballer by himself, but he just inspired his teammates to be better footballers. His greatest achievements usually involved getting his teams – Napoli and the Argentinian national side – to overperform.
And yet the completeness and maturity of the Maradona on the field was somehow wedded to the man-child he became when he walked off it. He was partying all the time, into the wee hours of the morning. He had so many illegitimate children by women. He turned to drugs and developed a terrible habit. But he didn’t lose his drive – he hired a personal fitness trainer, over and above the training that he did with the club. And when he did play, this was the 80s, and it was Serie A, where the defenders were king. He was kicked about pretty liberally, and he probably aged very quickly.
I would say that almost the entirety of his glory years were at Napoli. Before that, he was precocious and useful. He was even a good player at Barcelona, but he had to go after that infamous brawl against Bilbao. But he got together a team that was usually a mid-table side, and led them to the only Serie A titles they ever won. The big three of Italy usually had such a tight stranglehold on the Serie A title, and once in a blue moon, one of the Rome clubs would win it. But Maradona guided Napoli to the two and only titles won by southern clubs. And threw in a domestic cup and a UEFA cup for good measure. And when he fell out with Napoli, it was in a bad way. He went from being treated like a god, to being some kind of pariah in a very short order. I don’t remember the details, but his departure was ignominious. Of course, his relationship with Naples would eventually heal and he would go back to being their patron saint, but it must have stung.
The turning point was Maradona’s guiding Argentina to the finals of the 1990 world cup. Everybody hated that world cup, and it’s usually talked about as the worst world cup in living memory, and probably it was the end of a golden era of World Cups as the Most Important Football Competition in the World. There was too much leeway for defenders to kick attacking players off the pitch, and it led to a few reforms that made for a few better world cups in the 1990s. But the quality of the play just went back to being mediocre in the 21st century, other than a handful of great sides (Spain and Germany).
1990 could not have begun more ignominiously for the Argentinians. They were upset by Cameroon, who suddenly became the most wonderful underdog Cinderella stories in 1990, leading to Pele predicting that an African side would win the World Cup by 2000. (That wasn’t true, but many sides that have won the World Cup have had important players of African descent). Then they upset Brazil, and then Italy. Maradona had another hand of God to cheat the USSR out of a goal, even though that may not have changed the final result. They defeated a Yugoslavia team that could have been a great side if it hadn’t splintered into pieces in the 90s. And the final against Germany was one of the most infamous World Cup finals of all time.
(As another aside, World Cup finals in years ending with 0 are always interesting. The 1930 World Cup had to be played with two different balls as Argentina and Uruguay couldn’t agree on which one to use. The 1950 last match of the finals group had Uruguay infamously upsetting the Brazillians in the Maracana. The 1970 match between Brazil and Italy was acclaimed as one of the greatest football matches ever. The 1990 match between West Germany and Argentina was a bad tempered and boring match. And the 2010 match was basically another throwback to 1990. At least, the Dutch were trying to foul their way to victory and stop the Spanish from playing – it didn’t work.)
At that time, it just felt wrong that Maradona and Argentina managed to make it to that final. Perhaps if the Dutch, the Yugoslavians, England, Ireland or Cameroon managed to make it further, they might have liked that World Cup a bit more. There was this taint over Maradona as being a disgrace. He was a cheater and a drug user, and yet somehow this seemed to overshadow the intelligence and skill he brought to the game. In the semi-finals, this was a very tricky situation. It was played in Naples, Maradona’s stomping ground. Maradona declared that the people of Naples should be supporting him, not Italy, since the rest of the Italians always looked down on the poorer southern regions. When the Argentinians beat Italy, there was hell to pay.
That was probably one of the biggest turning points in Maradona’s life. It was a charmed life up to that point. The following season, Maradona and Napoli began a fairly wretched defence of their Serie A title, and towards the end of it, he was hauled up for a drug test. He failed it, and then was banned for 15 months, and after that he was never quite the same player who conquered the world. He would probably have helped Argentina to another World Cup final in 1994 if he wasn’t caught using ephedrine. He had short lived spells in Sevilla, Newell’s Old Boys and Boca Juniors, and apparently he still managed to inspire many of the teammates he had with him, but it was apparent that he had faded.
The sad tale of Maradona is that his life after that Italy semi-final was as sad as the life before that had been inspiring. He managed to defy gravity for so long that it seemed that he would never fall to earth, but that’s what happened anyway. In a way, he reminded me of Michael Jackson. Michael’s biography was called “the Magic and the Madness” and that could have been the title of Diego Maradona’s biography. Both of them were childhood geniuses, and were icons to inhabitants of the third world. They were both outsiders who succeeded in a white man’s world and brought joy and hope to many people, and yet at the same time they led coddled and cloistered lives.
They were both two-faced. In their chosen profession, they were extremely dedicated and professional, and yet in their own personal lives, nobody ever drew up any boundaries for them. In their professions, they were multi-talented. Michael Jackson was the great musician and singer and dancer. He turned the music video into an art form and a platform for his incredible stage show. Maradona was the complete footballer. A delicate magician, just like Messi, only stronger and more robust. A great goalscorer, a great playmaker and a great captain. If all the world’s a stage, they were both stars of their own show, and they helped reinvent that show.
Their private lives were another story. They were surrounded by entourages who attended to any whim and fancy they had. Even as they were past their primes, they lived in their own bubbles, and were feted anytime they appeared in public. When they died, their doctors basically were called up for manslaughter, and would be questioned about whether they enabled their patients to kill themselves.
Maradona in his later life was famous for his excesses. He was basically a golden calf. He was famous for his health problems, for being fat, for having his stomach stapled. He was famous for his failed attempts at managing. He did a half decent job with Argentina, and it was truly entertaining to see him flip the bird at a lot of the journalists when he did get them qualified for the World Cup. It was a talented squad, and therefore it was rather unseemly that they got thrashed by Germany in the quarter finals, although even if they had gotten past Germany, they would have gotten knocked out by Spain.
As for Argentina, after Diego Maradona, they never overachieved again the way they did in 1986 and 1990. They were knocked out by Romania in their first match after Maradona’s ban, and it’s conceivable that if that hadn’t happened, they could have gotten past Sweden to face Brazil in the semi-finals. In 1998, they also had a very talented team who kicked out England, but they fell to Holland. In 2002, they had one of their greatest teams kicked out of the first round. In 2006, 2010 and 2014, they were knocked out by Germany, and therein they constantly thwarted Lionel Messi’s attempt to get his hands on the World Cup. In fact, if you counted in 1986 and 1990, that would be five times they faced Germany, and Germany would knock them out on 4 occasions and Argentina would win the World Cup on that other occasion.
Curiously enough, nobody seemed to remark that Maradona never helped Argentina win a Copa America, as though that competition didn’t count. And maybe it was fairly ignominious that Messi would reach 3 Copa America finals and lose all of them.
The thing about Maradona is that he fits the mould of a hero who reaches midlife and suddenly has all his powers stripped away from him. Then he finds himself unable to adapt to life after that, because he has never prepared for a life where he had to use any of his other abilities. He never became a businessman, or a philanthropist or a spokesperson or a manager. Unless you believe that having his entourage around him counts as being a philanthropist. He segued from being one of the most famous athletes in the world to being one of the most famous couch potatoes in the world.
He could have been a Franz Beckenbauer or a Johan Cryuff, and become a great coach with a great philosophy – after all, he did have one of the greatest football minds on the pitch. Or rather perhaps his great mind only functioned in the service of his immediate vicinity – namely, how to be a great individual player, or to be a great playmaker, but it was never about the larger strategic picture. A lot of the tactical development of football took place in the 80s and 90s and it’s possible that in terms of his strategic thinking, he was essentially a dinosaur. His 4-0 capitulation at the hands of Germany betrayed his lack of appreciation for space on a football field.
In a way, he resembled the child prodigy who failed to find a second act in midlife. Like Mozart, or Charlie Parker, or Garrincha, or F Scott Fitzgerald. Nobody should ever doubt that he was an incredible human being. His enemies like to tar him with labels like he’s a drug user and a cheat. But his teammates, I feel are the ones who deliver the ultimate verdict on what he’s like as a footballer, and they all loved him.
