The marvel that is Maradona

Press, 2 July 1986, Page 42

The marvel that is Maradona

By

ROBERT WOODWARD,

of Reuters.

For nine years Diego Armando Maradona had been potentially the most gifted soccer player in the world. Last week in the Aztec Stadium, the Argentinian captain proved beyond doubt that he is a once-in-a-lifetime event whose skills stand comparison with Pele and very few others. Ever since he made his first division debut at 16, the pocket-sized Argentinian had seemed destined for great things. Three famous clubs, Boca Juniors, Barcelona and Napoli, paid out a total of well over 10 million dollars for his mercurial services. Fans in their millions turned out to watch the man with the miraculous left foot, but a mixture of injury, bad luck and petulance meant he never quite gave his all for club or country. Until, that is, last week’s World Cup victories over England and Belgium which took the 1978 champion into the World Cup final against West Germany, a match won by Argentina, 3-2.. Maradona was the heart, the motor and the executioner of his side, launching attack after attack, drifting past defenders like a ghost past blind men and treating two of the best goalkeepers in the world with almost indecent non-

chalance as he scored all four goals. “We were beaten by the best player in the world,” the Belgian manager, Guy Thys, said after the semifinal, an opinion shared by everyone who saw the 25-year-old’s performance live or on television. History has not recorded the name of the scout who spotted Maradona playing for a youth team in Buenos Aires called “Los Cebollitas” (The Little Onions), but if he could be found he would surely be given the freedom of Argentina’s capital city, something which Maradona was given last week. Diego was born in Lanus, part of metropolitan Buenos Aires, but he lived most of his youth in Villa Fiorito, a working class area of the capital where he spent his evenings kicking a ball around the streets with his seven brothers and sisters. "I got my first football when I was five years old and I haven’t stopped kicking one since,” Maradona says. His father, a factory worker, had to work hard to support his large brood and the family remains a very important element in the life of Maradona, who has been engaged to a young Argentinian called Claudia Villafane for some years. When he was transfeiiSad to Barcelona in

1982, Maradona brought over an entourage of 40 family members and friends. He dedicated the goals against Belgium to his mother and father. A modest man whd hates to be compared with Pele, Diego will talk proudly for hours about his brothers, Hugo and Lalo, who are starting to make a soccer name for themselves back home. “Hugo’s the only player I’d be glad to give up my number 10 jersey for,” says the curly-haired Maradona, who harbours a burning ambition to return to Boca Juniors and play in the same team as his brothers. Maradona has worn the “10” shirt — the number also associated with Pele — since he started his professional career with the unfashionable first division club, Argentines Juniors. He agreed to join them only after being persuaded that he would be wasted as an accountant, his first choice of career. The debut of the 1.65 m cannonball caused a sensation, and it was only a matter of months before he was seleted for the national side, making his debut for Argentina in a friendly match against Hungary in the spring of 1978. The national manager, Cesar Luis Mencrtti, in-

eluded him in the provisional 25-man squad for the 1978 World Cup finals, but Maradona was one of the three left out of the final Cup-winning squad, a crushing disappointment for the 17-year-old. The young man did not speak to Menotti for six months but they settled their differences in time for Maradona to captain Argentina to victory in the 1979 World Youth Cup. His performance in the Japan tournament persuaded Boca Juniors, which had been going through a lean patch, to pay out well over one million dollars. It proved money well spent as Boca won the championship in 1980-81, Maradona finishing as the league’s top goal-scorer for the second season running. Maradona arrived at the 1982 World Cup finals with the world at his feet and European fans clamouring to see if all they had heard about the Argentinian forward was true. Unfortunately both he and Argentina blew it The defending champion qualified for the second round, despite a 1-0 defeat by Belgium in the tournament’s opening game, but finished bottom of their group after losing to Italy and Brazil. Maradona shone only

fitfully, and frustration with the violent tactics of the “caveman” — a name he gave to destructive defenders like Italy’s Claudio Gentile — caused him to make an early exit from the finals, after being sent off for a disgraceful -foul on Brazil’s Batista. But Barcelona had seen enough to pay Boca around three million dollars for Maradona’s services in the hope he could take it to the league title for the first time in a decade. His time at the Spanish club was not a success. Illness and the attentions of Spanish defenders meant he played just 76 games, albeit hitting 45 goals, in two seasons. The first season Barcelona won both the Spanish and League Cups, but Maradona contributed little after contracting hepatitis. He was showing traces of his best form in the 1983-84 season when a brutal tackle by Bilbao’s Andoni Goikoetxea put him out of soccer for several weeks. The ankle eventually recovered but Maradona’s morale did not He was sent off in a local derby against Espanol and then became the central figure infthe near-riot after the Swinish Cup final with Bilbao, witnessed by King

Juan Carlos. The resulting lengthy ban from domestic soccer, and the departure of Menotti after one season with Barcelona, persuaded Maradona that his future .did not He in Spain and it thus came as no surprise when he signed for Napoli in the summer of 1984. ' What was surprising was the fee — about seven miUion dollars, a world record for a player who was well on the way to becoming a possible genius let down by his temperament, an Argentinian George Best. But his time in Napoli, where crowds average a staggering 70,000, and his appointment as Argentina’s captain seem to have done the trick and it was a more mature, less selfish Maradona : who thrilled the crowds in Mexico. His behaviour off the field was beyond reproach, taking the suffocating media interest in him with a mixture of amusement and resignation. The one blemish on his record here was: the “hand-ball”, goal against England/ but even the most fervent. English fan would agree with Argentinian Carlos Bilardd’s assessment of his captain: “Maradona has proved that he is a super player. He Js also a supers man, an>taxample to tlie res* of thdSzam.”