Why I Cried Over Maradona

WHAT DOES one write about Diego Armando Maradona?

For me, the greatest soccer player who ever was… A man who rose from the slums of Argentina to the pinnacle of the theatre of dreams.

The one who single-handedly dragged his nation to the football Everest of the 1986 Fifa World Cup. The one who took Napoli from nothing to the dizzying heights of European football. The bad boy, the charismatic talisman.

Born in a shantytown on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires, for millions across the world Maradona came to symbolise that a child born in the dirtiest and most dangerous slums could rise to the zenith of greatness.

His story of being a footballing protégé who received a soccer ball from his uncle as a toddler, to opening taxi doors and selling the foil from cigarette packets to help his family, resonates in the lives of poor boys and girls around the globe.

On 29 June 1986, I was 13 years old. It was a Sunday. I was listening to the Fifa World Cup final being played in the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on the radio. It was a different planet back then. The digital and social media age – in which sporting and other news travels across the globe faster than breakneck speed – was a lifetime away. Brush strokes had to be painted on the canvas of my mind. I had to conjure up images in my head of that pass from a heavily marked Maradona that created Jorge Burruchaga’s winning goal. Argentina 3 – West Germany 2.

My team at that World Cup was England (we all have a cross to bear in our lives), whose quarterfinal against Maradona’s Argentina became a theatre of war – a form of sporting revenge for the military defeat of Argentina in the Falklands war four years earlier.

It also displayed the polar sides of the little maestro. His ‘hand of God’ goal, where he used his fist to beat the giant-like frame of England goalkeeper Peter Shilton and punch the ball into the net, remains a marker for those who love to hate him.

Maradona’s second goal became known as ‘the goal of the century’. It was a piece of soccer artistry that still leaves the mouths of friend and foe hanging open. The little maestro weaved past five England defenders, and finally Shilton. Argentina won that game 2-1. Maradona’s performance against Belgium in the semifinal was arguably better. In Mexico he was at the peak of his powers.

I could wax on forever about how he took a minnow team from southern Italy called Napoli by the scruff of their neck, who had played second fiddle to the powerhouse northern teams in the European nation until he arrived. Led by Maradona, Napoli won their first ever Serie A Italian Championship in 1986-87. It saw the Neapolitans hold mock funerals for Juventus and Milan, burning their coffins. Murals of Maradona were painted on the city’s ancient buildings, and newborn children were named in his honour.

I could write reams and reams about a young child who had stardom fall into his lap at a time when there were no publicists managing his image or curbing his lust for life and self-destruction. His drug binges, love for the ladies and even his links to Napoli’s mafia families are the stuff of documentaries and news consumption to this day.

Even as his life veered out of control because of drug bannings, being sent home in shame from the United States, it was splashed across newspaper pages worldwide. Many thought it was the end, that his obituary would have been written decades ago. Yet, he bounced back. For many who are and were fighting addiction, he became an enabler to somehow find the strength to survive.

Maradona is my hero. I grew up in circumstances that do not classify as the surroundings of a ‘normal’ childhood. Even today it is still a space where gangsters, drugs and poverty are the daily bread of many youngsters.

I am writing this piece now because on Wednesday evening I cried as the reality of his passing sunk in.

I had risen early on Wednesday with Namibian voters, who stood in queues – some from 03h00 or 04h00 – to cast their votes in the local and regional authority elections. When my colleague Shinovene Immanuel, who has fully embraced picking up breaking news, came to my desk and told me about the first tweets confirming Maradona’s death, he did not know of my immense love and admiration for the soccer star.

He had no idea that seconds later I would have to excuse myself from putting the final touches to the front page. I walked out of the newsroom and tears flowed. To understand why, I decided to craft this piece. Even now I’m searching deep inside for the why. It is not enough to say he was the best soccer player I have ever seen on the football field. Many before and after have had great teams to lead; players who stood above those of opposing teams.

Maradona, as he did when rising from the shack slum of Villa Fiorito to stardom and fame, took the rough and ill-hewn around him and dragged them to the mountain top.

I have come to understand my tears. I, along with many others, will continue to tell the tale of the poorest of boys who rose to become a god among men.

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