On November 10, 2001, Diego Armando Maradona played his final testimonial match, in Buenos Aires. For those unacquainted with the tradition, testimonials are tribute games, played for adoring, nostalgic fans, in which friends of the honored player jog leisurely around the pitch, allowing him one more moment of glory. Maradona’s testimonial was an all-star affair, with luminaries like Hristo Stoichkov and Eric Cantona, befitting a player who was once regarded as the best in the world.
In his
prime, Maradona could flit past defenders with sublime ease, but now, at
forty-one, he was overweight, with bad knees and bad ankles, and had been
fighting drug addiction for nearly two decades. The opposing players indulged
him, stepping aside as he lumbered by. He scored two goals that day, both
penalties against René Higuita, the former goalkeeper for the Colombian
national team, who obliged his old friend by jumping out of the way. Each time
the ball hit the back of the net, Higuita and Maradona locked in an embrace.
For
casual fans, it made for uncomfortable viewing. Even for those of us who knew
the broad outlines of Maradona’s fall from grace, it was shocking. In the
nineteen-eighties, when I was in middle school, Maradona had been my idol, but,
by the time of the testimonial match, I admit that I’d lost sight of his
career. It was harder to keep up with world soccer in those days, but that’s
only a partial excuse. This, unfortunately, is how we often treat our heroes:
with a kind of transactional love. We use them up. Seeing him in that tribute
game was a reminder of all we’d taken from him, and I wasn’t the only one who
felt that way. A few days later, in Lima, Peru, I visited a cousin of mine. At
the mention of Maradona’s farewell match, he fell into a reverential silence,
his eyes suddenly watering. “Diego is going to die,” he said in an urgent
whisper, the words tumbling out with the force of discovery, as if Maradona’s
mortality had never occurred to him. My cousin was in medical school at the
time.
If it
seems strange to you that a med student could forget that another human being
was subject to the same laws of life and death as the rest of us, it’s likely
you didn’t see—perhaps “experience” is the correct verb—Maradona at his peak.
Argentina’s quarter-final match against England in the 1986 World Cup will
always be remembered for Maradona’s two goals, which, taken together, are a
kind of shorthand into his genius and recklessness. The first, an audacious
handball, is brazen, opportunistic cheating—which somehow worked. His second,
scored minutes later, is known simply as the Goal of the Century: a dazzling,
mazy seventy-yard sprint with the ball glued improbably to his left foot, as
English defenders flail helplessly to the side. The iconic Argentine-television
narration sums up the feeling: “Diego,” the breathless announcer shouts, “what
planet are you from?”
Somehow,
between scoring that goal, winning the World Cup two matches later, and that
2001 testimonial match, it all went wrong. Asif Kapadia’s remarkable new
documentary, called simply “Diego Maradona” and released, in September, on HBO,
tells the harrowing story of what happened. The film, like all good sports
documentaries, is only ostensibly about sport: in fact, it’s a tragic parable,
a portrait of genius, a revealing look at the emotional cost of fame and how
disposable talent can be, no matter how otherworldly the gift. What the film
makes clear is that the origins of Maradona’s downfall were always present; the
bold recklessness that made him successful also crippled him in the end.
Maradona
grew up in Villa Fiorito, a slum on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Raised in
poverty, he signed his first professional contract at age fifteen, and
supported his family from that day forward. At twenty-one, he joined F.C.
Barcelona, for what was then a world-record fee. The film’s first shocking
sequence comes from the tail end of his time there: a young Maradona in an
on-field brawl, wading fearlessly into the thick of the chaos. It was the final
of the Copa del Rey, played before the King of Spain, though these sporting
details hardly matter. This isn’t soccer we’re watching; it’s a street fight. A
quick cut takes us to the end of the incident: Maradona, panting, his
blue-and-red jersey torn at the neck, and, behind him, a glimpse of the
stadium, the faceless thousands who’ve just witnessed this madness. He seems
not to notice them.
The
documentary really begins in July, 1984, when Barcelona sold Maradona to Napoli
(for another world-record fee), and eighty-five thousand fans packed the Stadio
San Paolo to welcome him. Nothing about the sale made sense: one of the world’s
greatest players (he was not yet the greatest) sold to a club in Italy’s
poorest and most violent city, a team more accustomed to fighting relegation
than vying for trophies. The illogic is hinted at in the first press
conference, when an impudent journalist dares to ask what many must have wondered:
Did the local Mafia have anything to do with financing this deal? Maradona,
young and handsome, dissembles for a moment, before the president of the club,
Corrado Ferlaino, steps in to reject the notion with full-throated anger. In
spite of these denials, the spectre of the Camorra haunts the film, always
present, dark and seductive.
The film
argues convincingly that Maradona’s greatest sporting achievement was not the
1986 World Cup victory with Argentina but the two scudettos—Italian
domestic-league championships—that he won with Napoli, in 1987 and 1990, which
upended the league and angered the traditional powerhouses. The vitriol
directed at Napoli and its fans was an expression of a national divide between
the North and South. Naples was thought of as backward, barely part of Italy at
all but, in the words of one commentator, “African,” a statement that reveals
some of the racism that still plagues soccer today. During Napoli’s match
against Juventus, in Turin, the fans sang, “Sick with cholera! Victims of the
earthquake! You never washed with soap! Napoli shit! Napoli cholera! You’re the
shame of Italy!” An underdog from a slum, Maradona took this classism
personally. Later in the film, we see him at home with his young daughter,
still in diapers. She has a microphone in her hand and he’s coaching her:
“Juventus, vaffanculo!” he says—“Juventus, fuck off”—delighting as she repeats
it. This scene approaches the essence of his gift. It wasn’t simply athletic;
it was in his character, his defiance.
The
on-field footage is stunning, but it’s the smaller, more intimate moments that
really stand out: we see a young Maradona playing tennis with his girlfriend;
relaxing at a family barbecue; leading his teammates in fight songs; lost in
his thoughts as a party rages around him. Fans gather at his doorstep, begging
for autographs and photos, though it doesn’t seem to gratify him. To be famous
is to be condemned to a unique variety of loneliness. Nevertheless, the
Neapolitans, who can scarcely comprehend their good fortune—it’s as if their
city has been visited by an angel in soccer cleats—shower him with manic
adulation. A nurse leaves a vial of Maradona’s blood on a shrine in a Catholic
church. When Napoli wins its first title, a banner is hung along a wall at the
entrance to a cemetery, taunting the dead: “You don’t know what you missed.”
In a
sense, we all missed it: not what happened on the field but Maradona’s decline,
which took place away from the fans. Now, with this film, it’s all there, right
before our eyes. As the fame wears on him, he puts on a little weight. We see
him with a local mafioso, going out for the night. He describes his routine:
after the weekly game, on Sunday, he parties until Wednesday, with cocaine
provided by his Mafia friends; he takes a few days to dry out; he plays again;
he repeats. It all seems so joyless. After leading Napoli to its first (and,
for now, only) European club title, in 1989, Maradona asks to be transferred.
He is spent, and descending into full-blown addiction. Ferlaino, Napoli’s
president, says no. “I became his jailer,” Ferlaino admits.
The
defining moment came during the 1990 World Cup, in Italy. Maradona, playing for
Argentina and already hated by most Italian fans because of his association
with a despised club, was booed everywhere he played. Argentina met Italy in
the semifinals, at Napoli’s Stadio San Paolo. For Maradona, it was a kind of
homecoming to a city ridiculed by the rest of Italy, so he invited local fans
to support Argentina instead. This was perceived by many as disrespect, and,
when Argentina eliminated Italy, Maradona became the most hated man in the
country. The next season, back at Napoli, he faced fury unlike any he’d ever
encountered. Now unloved, his partying spun out of control. Soon afterward, he
was caught in a doping-and-prostitution scandal, the league banned him from the
game for more than a year, and he returned to Argentina in disgrace.
What’s
remarkable isn’t the scale of Maradona’s precipitous fall but the fact that he
kept it together for so long, under such intense pressure. Watching the film,
we get a sense of what might have been if this supremely gifted athlete had
been protected, just a bit, from the demands of fame, and from himself. The day
of his 2001 testimonial, Maradona took the microphone and stood before the crowd,
arms folded across his chest, as they sang his name. Soccer is the world’s most
beautiful game, he said, and nothing he’d done should be held against the sport
itself. “I made mistakes, and I paid for them,” he said. The entire stadium
roared back its forgiveness, and he paused for a second, before continuing.
“But the ball is never stained.”
*** Daniel
Alarcón is the executive producer of NPR’s Spanish-language podcast, “Radio
Ambulante,” and teaches at Columbia’s Journalism School.
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