The life of Diego Armando Maradona is a tale. Because Maradona always remained a child. It is therefore a tale for children and as such it is edifying. We must say to all those who say that Maradona did not show himself to be exemplary enough for a sportsman of this ilk that they are wrong. It is the greatest modern exemplar history. It must be told again and again.

I accepted the unacceptable: I became an adult.

Thus began my expulsion from the present.

Octavio Paz

The Neapolitans are today a large tribe…

who decided to die out, rejecting the new power,

that is, what we call history, or

modernity… It is a refusal, coming from the heart of

community (we know about collective suicides

in herds of animals); a fatal negation

against which there is nothing to be done. She provokes

a deep melancholy, like all tragedies

which are accomplished slowly; but also a deep

consolation, because this refusal, this negation of

history are correct, are sacrosanct.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Ardor ardor my heart I was never made for introspection what I wanted was always to go forward in the night in the party of the night and in the enjoyment of Sunday when the San Paolo stadium vibrated that the Neapolitans were shouting I could have heard their cries at the bottom of a cave if they had locked me up at the bottom of Vesuvius their cries would have made the majestic the great the impossible Vesuvius collapse because when I arrived here I arrived by air and already yes already I knew I said Ardor my heart and there they were eighty thousand waiting for me and there I saw him he became green with rage no one had ever inflicted such a snub on him no one had made fun of him in public like that no one had ever set foot near him and said now you're not the only wonder of this place so I said I build from today my empire in this place and the eighty thousand Neapolitans who re filled the San Paolo stadium said

here he will build his empire and we will be that empire

they had never said that they had never thought themselves so strong they had never faced the North and its pride its money its industrialization its mortuary and they said it they shouted it they repeated it at will they knew they were saying it could believe that a dream was coming true and I arrived by air I thought it was the Iberian that was made for me but there they didn't believe me oh no they didn't I don't believe I like the Iberians I speak their language I played there in a dominated country how could the slave become the master of the exploiter I asked myself the question oh not for long because I was pushing my heart I I had failed with the Iberians but over there I was with the rich I was with the Catalans they have millions and millions of pesetas I had no cause to defend they thought they had everything what could I give them only could I offer them we can only offer the spirit the Catalans believed they could buy it me I don't know I was going to serve as a banner the spirit it's something no it's not a signature at the bottom of a contract it's not window dressing it's a poem it's not worth anything but no billionaire can afford it pay well that's it when I took off from Barcelona when I turned my back on Nuñez and all his dollars and pesetas I said to myself Ardor my heart there you will build your empire and until the end end of time we will adore you for what you accomplished at the foot of Vesuvius in the Parthenopean city so I left with a light heart and in the helicopter I remembered this promise made to me by an opposing player when I had just lost five goals to nil oh my god i remember that day like it was yesterday he came to me at the end of the game and he told me

don't worry one day you'll be the greatest player we've ever seen on a pitch

obviously at that time I didn't know anything it made me happy of course but I had lost and I never wanted it again he was a head taller than me and he told me you will be the greatest player ever 'we've never seen so I went back to Villa Fiorito and dona Tota mamita the one without whom all this wouldn't have happened well dona Tota looked at me all filthy full of mud and tears in her eyes and I told her said what the other boy had told me and she told me that really only her mother can say something like that and that we can believe it she told me it's true a day you will be the greatest player in the world so she put her hand on my cheek removed a little dirt which must have seemed too much on my face which was all made up and she said to me Pelusa ⁽ she called me always like this because of my tuft of curly hair Pelusa you will train and become the greatest player the earth has ever known well me will you believe it eh Well I believed her and that's why I say Ardor my heart because I feel that the seventy thousand Neapolitans gathered in this San Paolo stadium also believe it

and i want the world to believe it

Until Barcelona everything had gone very quickly and very easily but after my departure from Catalonia I had a little time to realize that the path which seemed to have been mapped out in front of me since I no longer remember let's say forever would know some difficulties that I hadn't foreseen all that because since I was walking I was following a ball at the beginning it was a small ball of rags tied together after I had my first ball it was nothing but I was three years old I slept all night with it I drew arabesques in my dreams unstoppable dribbling incredible goals everything happened so fast I remember it like it was yesterday all my friends from Villa Fiorito this sad and gray on the outskirts of buenos aires but nothing was sad and gray for me i took the ball and i played with it i juggled breathlessly when i was nine yes i remember it i was nine and a man walked past our house he said how many juggles can you do without the ball touching the ground i looked at him and i told him that there was no limit that he was the one who set the limits so he offered me to juggle at half time of the home team matches i ran to dona Tota because it was mom who decided and she said ok you want to show what you can do she knew dona Tota that this that I wanted more than anything was to touch caress this ball that I couldn't get away from so she said okay and the following Sunday I walked onto the field there were thousands of people watching the exploits of their team me I was only a little boy of nine we had not yet entered the seventies and my team was called Los Cebollitas ^? I remember it like it was yesterday oh I know it will sound silly to some but who else was loved and hated so much as me, whatever I did there were always people for me take a dislike to understand nothing of my simplest actions but me oh if they only knew all these people if they could be aware of that for me nothing is more important than the game the ball game football obviously they will talk about my universe saturated by the bullet but me if I look them in the eye it is they who lower their eyes it is they who are wrong to judge me and I am sure that they know it because how to say I am sure that they feel it that I did not deserve their hatred so much that this hatred only exists because they are jealous jealous there is nothing else to say well I say that they have no reason to be jealous because they don't realize what it's like to be born in this little house in Villa Fiorito in a neighborhood r so poor and they can't imagine what it's like to grow up in such a small house big as a bathroom with two brothers and five sisters they don't know oh no they have no idea those who judge are those who have never known poverty so I see the eyes of this man a tall, well-dressed man I see those eyes I had already seen him pass in the street and stop to look at me I look up head and he told me would you like to show what you can do so I said after asking dona Tota but of course and he told me what's your name and I told him Diego el Niño de Oro ^? I wanted to add remember this name but I saw in his eyes that it was not worth it that he already remembered that he would always remember it so the following Sunday it is came to pick us up dona Tota papa Diego and my brothers and my sisters he paid for everyone's bus and we went to the stadium there he installed my family in the stands and me he made me take an underpass I I met players and coaches they all had nice equipment he gave me new shoes a shirt and shorts and he said it's yours Pelusa it's dona Tota who told him how she m called my nickname and he pushed me on the back I was carrying my ball a brand new ball he had given me under my arm I walked forward and I felt the crowd of thousands of people who did not understand not me either i didn't understand all of the thousands of people laughing and joking or being sad at half time because their team was winning or lost thousands of people who normally wait impatiently for half time to end to see their team do battle well these thousands of brave Argentinians saw a small shape appear on the empty field the field was only mine I don't I didn't have to share it with the players on my team I didn't have to share it with the opposing players I didn't have to share it with the referees I just had a few minutes to show what I could do and I I heard the announcer say here is el Niño de Oro the king of juggling and I put the ball down and the announcer was finishing his sentence I thought to myself they don't remember my name they just heard it they forgot it I said to myself they have to say my name they have to remember it and I put the ball down and I lifted it with my left foot and I juggled almost a thousand times they had let me do it I would have juggled for each spectator but the half-time was over so I took my ball We and I went back to the locker room when I left the lawn I looked for Dona Tota but I did not find her there were too many people and I saw the players of the teams waiting on the edge of the field looking at me and i knew they were all starting to say my name that's when i knew and i was happy cause they were happy that was the time when i dreamed of being an idol like Rojitas the star of Boca Juniors or Pavoni I certainly didn't dream of reaching this high but I believe that the people who were present knew that I would go higher and the man who had asked me to come also knew it he took me by the hand and he offered to come back the following sunday i almost said yes right away and i remembered that i had to ask dona Tota because without mamita all this was not possible he needed his permission but dona Tota she wanted everything for her son she wanted him to have the best and still it was not enough inf in she said yes a firm yes to the man who repeated my name as if it were that of a catholic saint he repeated my name and I had the impression of a murmur which was growing louder Tota but also dad Diego whom we nicknamed Chitoro always protected me I always wanted to have them close to me and I always wanted to protect them when I had the means so that they too had what was necessary better like my brothers and sisters like my wife Claudia like all my friends my many friends those for whom I would never have failed I am always faithful to them while always I read in the press the same allegations about my clan but they do not understand nothing all these journalists they never understood anything the clan as they called it it was nothing but my family and my friends and I am only happy with the people I love around me and what did these journalists hope for I ask you me what did they hope for if not n We weld a little more with each of their attacks but they were wrong because despite these billions that I earned I did not change and my relations with my friends did not change either the journalists they were wrong even if they were right they were wrong because with my friends we were of the same stuff I knew almost all of them at Villa Fiorito we did the same stupid things together so when I have a moment I think of them or I get closer to them because he does not must not forget where we come from this tribe it was my refuge who has never known exile cannot understand because exile is hard and it is long like an endless winter my tribe she protected me from the excessive adulation of which I was the victim in fact I now see the only fear that I have ever had but then it is a fear which is in me which is part of me it is the fear of being alone one can be cheered on by tens of thousands one can be adored by millions of kids we are alone in the evening after the game when we go home so I didn't want to be alone I wanted to be at Villa Fiorito like at the beginning when the man came and asked me do you want to show the world what you know how to do I wanted to be with my family to be able to taste an asado ^? and take refuge snuggle up in Dona Tota's arms and kiss her I had to stand up against nostalgia and respect where we come from I can be blamed for it but the one who doesn't understand it has no heart oh how many journalists have a heart we can always say what we want but I am one of the people of gente and I will always fight for them I remember that many years later Marciano Grondona who is an Argentinian TV star and a famous sociologist said about me

the outside world divides into a minority of a few politicians journalists and leaders who want to use him and the people him he feels he is one of the people

and people it's not that damn Nuñez because of whom I lost two years in Barcelona oh my God what an experience these two years in Barcelona I'm really happy to have gotten out of it that's what I'm to come out of it as one comes out of a tunnel or a cave where I would have been held against my will it is not Barcelona or the Catalans who are in question they gave me a lot and I regret not having given them back only a few scraps you have to believe that Spain and especially Barcelona were not made for me how to say when the waves are negative you must not insist that's it you must not insist you have to clear off as quickly as possible taïaut taïaut I think we can say that I fled Barcelona Nunez and his friend Gaspard oh my God the president of the Barcelona football club and his deputy what did they make me see these two even if it's true I recognize it who said finally but yes I recognize it this transfer to Barcelona almost made me lose my head j I can still see the face of Francisco the receptionist at the Avenida Palace where I stayed when I arrived I remember when he saw me and my tribe arrive in the marbled hall of his luxurious hotel he had never seen that I I was worse than a rock star I had my head capsized caught in a vice I was only good on the pitch I was just 21 I came from Villa Fiorito and I didn't know good manners ah that's sure that I drove them crazy but me they have to understand all these handsome gentlemen oh yes that they have to understand something is that luxury I laughed in his face wealth I I slapped her I slapped her by being even more opulent than her it was a rivalry that's what you have to understand wealth is insolent for a kid from Villa Fiorito so I had to be even more insolent than her to appropriate it to me it had only ever existed for me to use and use it was the summer of 1982 and oh yes I should have known that Barcelona was not for me my young and precocious reputation had just suffered its first blow I had just played the world cup with Argentina and oh all that was too heavy for me where was spent the fun of the grounds of Villa Fiorito the frantic games with the Cebollitas that I will never forget with Argentinos Junior where we spent our time trying not to go down to the second division that is perhaps where I have done the most feats my God the number of feats that I have accomplished in this red jersey and then after there was Boca Junior the biggest Argentinian club and the title of champion the first not the second title before he there had been the magnificent junior world championship in Japan oh my God how far all that can seem as I fly over the Mediterranean to reach Naples everything is so far away and the game what remains of the game one day Luis-César Menotti who selected me the first time for j To work with Argentina I was 16 years old my God how far all this is away I was 16 years old and I wore the blue and white jersey of the Argentine selection me el Nino de Oro nothing more normal I thought then nothing more normal everything had been so fast a year earlier I had played my first game in the Argentine first division I was the Mozart of football I was Rimbaud I was God and God does not like those he elects to believe themselves stronger than him that's what he wanted to make me understand maybe and then there was this fracture the first maybe the hardest to bear when Menotti called me Menotti we call him el flaco ^? because it is big and long like a Menotti cigar calls me and tells me

Nino you are 17 you have a long career ahead of you you are a prodigious player and you will play many other World Cups

he was right of course time proved him right he was right but he was wrong I keep an eternal tear a wound never healed from having had to leave the preparation of the team and from having lived this World Cup this mundial 1978 our mundial as a spectator in front of the television that I had just bought from Tota and at the stadium for the final I had prepared my papellitos these little papers where we Argentinians write words of love for the players and which we swing from the top from the bleachers I was sad it was the second time I cried because of football the first was losing with the Cebollitas when this young boy came to tell me that one day I will be the greatest player of the world I cried and I thought back to that other day I had been juggling at half-time for several months and a TV crew had come to film me the journalist came near me he came all near me with his big microphone he asked me

tell me little prodigy do you have a dream

I answered him I have two the first is to play the World Cup the second is to win it he was speechless the journalist but he too would remember my name I have two dreams to play the World Cup and winning it I will need two World Cups to realize these dreams of dreams I still have others and I will do others my head is still full of dreams ah how I would have liked to play alongside Kempes and Luque I couldn't blame Menotti he had made my country win it was the first World Cup we won and we breathed better in the streets of Buenos Aires despite the military junta and Colonel Videla, who held us in his iron fist, it gave us Argentinians a bit of air, it gave us oxygen and we were very proud to have won this title, but I stayed on my hungry then Menotti who loved me like a son I know it now I always knew it Menotti loved me like a son and he offered me rt a showcase and an audience and he told me now show what you can do it was in tokyo the following year this under 21 team this is by far the best team i have ever played on she was extraordinary we arrived in Japan with the fixed idea of ​​doing as well as our elders a year earlier and what a recital we gave six matches for six victories 20 goals in our advantage and 2 against I was crowned best player and Ramon Diaz top scorer right in front of me the best team I've ever played in by far Gabriel Calderon Carabelli Ramon Diaz I remember all the players that made it up which team Tokyo was really the fulfillment of a dream but I already saw other challenges ahead of me after I went to play Boca Junior several times I capsized the Bombonera ^• our mythical stadium was 60,000 fans who were shouting my name and singing in unison Diego Diego laugh Just remembering it sends shivers down my spine Who hasn't known that can't understand what it feels like when you score a goal and the stadium upsets the communion that is established between the player and the public I was twenty years old and I was the idol of a country I was twenty years old and I was the center of the world since for me the center of the world was a ball sixty thousand spectators who chant your name that can make anyone lose their minds not to mention the thousands of others watching their televisions not to mention the articles calling me the new Pelé not to mention the thousands of dollars that allowed us to leave Villa Fiorito and live my brothers and sisters and dona Tota and don Diego and me in an apartment that seemed so opulent compared to Villa Fiorito and how I like to be surrounded by those I love oh yes I like to be near those I love eh well I had offered apartments to don Diego's friends who still lived in Esquina another faub ourg poor of Buenos Aires and in particular Rodolfo Gonzalez this young deaf-mute who stayed for hours watching me fiddle with the ball all these people yes people not powerful people like me except that I had the gift of football that thanks to him I earned a lot of money and that way I made those I love happy Tota always said when you have money you make the family benefit from it so me that's what I do and I did well anyway no one can tell me what to do and then my family my friends they were the ones who surrounded me the day Menotti told me Nino you are 17 you have a long career ahead of you you are a prodigious player and you will play many other world cups and that I am grateful to them because without them I would not have lasted I cried so much I wanted my revenge so badly so when Japan arrived when I won the junior world cup it wasn't a rematch no no it wasn't a rematch lo When I lit up the stadium all the TVs around the world started saying my name everyone said Diego yes that's it everyone said like a prayer Diego so I said it's me I'm the Niño I am Pelusa I am Diego and even me at that moment I felt the joy that I gave to others and then Menotti's words came back Nino you are 17 years old you have a long career ahead of you you are a prodigious player and you will play many other world cups so there I said to myself and I will win yes I will win so that the world continues to repeat Diego it was like a drug so japan it was not a revenge no no when I I brandished the cup with Simon Diaz and Calderon I said to myself this is only the beginning this is not my revenge not yet because when the journalist approached me with his big microphone and he m asked I was nine years old and I wasn't laughing I was nine years old and I was alone maybe that's it alone with the ball lon my ball so i didn't know what loneliness was i was serious and i was alone so the reporter said tell me little prodigy do you have a dream i answered him i did I have two the first is to play the world cup the second to win it and I was so serious that the journalist was speechless and now now I've never seen him again but I know that in the stadium or in front of his TV this journalist he repeats my name tirelessly I'm sure it's his drug for him too and he says this little prodigy I know him I was the first to interview him we call him el Niño de Oro and he invents goals that come from elsewhere so afterwards I didn't want to be alone anymore because this kid on this desolate pitch he was alone with his ball with no one to talk to and that's why I didn't no longer wanted to be alone I wanted my family and my friends my tribe around me so that I no longer wanted to be alone because I was already carrying a lot of re responsibilities my price was exorbitant for the time now it would make people laugh now I would be worth 1 billion francs and that nobody can understand it especially not the journalists especially not this French journalist who came to see me in Barcelona in 1982 he asked me if i thought i was worth 8 million dollars he asked me that i wasn't laughing i was serious i answered him that i was worth much more than that much more than 8 million dollars so he laughed and in his comment he said that i was pretentious this idiot of course a man is worth much more than 8 million dollars but that he couldn't understand it that's when i understood that with the journalists i will always be alone still alone in fact now that I think about it yes now as I approach Vesuvius in the air I can think quietly and yes my problem is that I am still alone between 1979 the year of my cup victory world of I headlines and 1984 the year I left Barcelona I must have had three depressions I don't know but if I know very well I don't know so if you can imagine what my life is like it's true that everything has started well it's true that the planet of football was at my feet but what is all this I have a family that I love a fiancée Claudia that I adore who is really and despite everything my port of attach it's her that I love and it's always to her that I come back to her only she understands me I have friends with whom I share crazy nights but we are South Americans after all and we live in exile yes exiled for a South American already exiled in his flesh by his double belonging to a different culture and to a different nature exiled in his spirit we need the night to live even faster even stronger I know that it is difficult for the people to understand Europeans who are clean and neat as originally chastened but we live to the rhythm of the samba of the tango there we need the night and its delights to accept the everyday is it all so hard to understand but what did they hope for in the end what did they believe by bringing me that i was going make them win I tried I would have liked the Barcelonians they had seen my goals with Boca and the Argentine selection like this Barcelonian who kept my goal against Estudiantes la Plata as a relic ah this goal I remember it as if c yesterday was this long pass from my teammate along the sideline this opponent who approaches me who arrives near the corner post the goal is far far on my left and hop with a magic kick from a prodigious diagonal I lob the goalkeeper from thirty meters ah that nobody expected it nobody I had been so fast it's like that Russian who marked me in the final of the junior world cup the first ball I receive is at halfway up I feel my bodyguard approaching behind my back at full speed I receive the ball I cushion it with my chest while directing it so that it comes in front of me the Russian arrives I do not let the ball fall on the ground and I lob the Russian who continues his race in the void while 'he realizes and he turns around I controlled the ball and I'm already far from some said I was reinventing football for now I was just going too fast but in fact there were a lot of great Platini players Zico Rummenigge before there was Pelé all these players were great but I was unique yes that's unique I know people will say I'm pretentious but if you look at the other players you can guess what they're going getting them to do it really well that's another issue that nobody discusses here you know what they're gonna do and you clap when they do it well done well done me you never know what I'm going to do just because I don't know myself you will tell me and Pelé for Pelé I will answer more s later all these memories will have taken another turn i won't forget because i can remember everything i'm in the air i like being in the air it's still gonna seem pretentious but in the air i feel like to be in my place is also oh I don't know if I have to admit that it should of course it should be in life there are so many things to say and do that it's normal to lose my head from time to time well okay let's go i'm going to tell something that has always worried me something that is at the heart of my existence and that i never talk to anyone about something my obsession where i 'm afraid my shadow when I was alone on the abandoned ground of Villa Fiorito I was trying to escape from my shadow my extraordinary goals were only used to challenge my shadow you have no idea what that is is no you have no idea my shadow always brings me back to earth while me I feel at home in the air so as soon as I score a goal I leap I jump to regain my sphere my heights and I punch the sky with rage at having succeeded in getting rid of this down-to-earth aspect of my existence this shadow that sticks to me and forces me out of the grounds to be a man like you and me, that is to say what I do least well and it's normal who can have dinner with God and then go down to bed in a concierge's lodge did we ever understand that each of my goals was an intimate dialogue with God so obviously I needed my tribe not to be alone when I came back down to earth and these people around me my family my friends these women these endless parties these exciting these exhilarating n were there only to allow me to find myself in rare moments and as they were rare I had to start again and again in order to find this freshness this oxygen just to find in rare moments the unique magic that I had known with the ball with the spectators s with God but no one can imagine what I felt when I no longer had God to dialogue with I felt so alone and this shadow that clung to my body then began to take shape a magnificent appointment my revenge yes was to be my revenge the revenge of 1978 when Luis-César Menotti came to see me and told me that I had a lot of world cups to play we were in 1982 I was 22 years old and I was going to show the world to the last skeptics what about the Niño de Oro i was going to play the world cup in spain in the best team that argentina ever had the winners of 78 with the juniors of 79 we were so strong unfortunately in football like in life, by the way, I know that now you have to be hungry I was always hungry because if you had been born in Villa Fiorito in such a slum you would always be hungry but the others this team were no longer hungry and that does not forgive we had too much co trust in us and from the first match it was in Barcelona we fell from above in front of Belgium I remember this coach this old man who didn't look like anything Guy Thys a funny guy awfully intelligent he had put on a kind of padlock around me yes that's a padlock they were four or five to fall on me and they stifled my game what a funny memory I never had the impression of playing this part it was very strange and we lost a really strange goal to nil but we were the defending champions and as good Argentines we rebelled sometimes the Europeans find it difficult to grasp the Argentine character which is all pride and nobility the poor Hungarians who wanted to repeat the the Belgians did not understand it that day I performed a recital like in Boca or with the Cebollitas we played an extraordinary match in the next match against El Salvador there were a lot of mistakes against me but we won the hardest part was starting because Argentina were playing against Italy and Brazil in qualifying matches that's when I felt the most alone it was the first time that God was not with me on a football pitch football he was not there because he was sickened by an Italian player who was the biggest cheater I have ever known Claudio Gentile Italy had played very badly in the first round they had almost been eliminated by the Cameroon and against us she decided to have me marked in the pants by Claudio Gentile in the pants is an expression that we use in football to say that the opponent is glued to you and Gentile was glued to me more than my shadow again because my shadow it never trips me up oh no it would only be missing if there had been a referee on the field Gentile would not have finished the game they say of me that I have cheated sometimes we are right to say it happened to me to be a miscreant rarely but it happened we talk about it again will still be but never ever we take into account the cheaters of all kinds that I have had to endure, not to mention those who have attacked my integrity Claudio Gentile must have made about thirty unforced errors against me I have never was able to develop my game never Argentina lost again the next match against Brazil it was a double or nothing we absolutely had to win we dominated a good part of the match but after the first Brazilian goal I remember this free kick from Eder a forty-meter missile that bounces off the crossbar and is picked up by Zico the referee should have called a penalty against me because Junior mowed me down in the middle of the box and nothing the referees weren't very good at that time and it's really a shame that the game suffers from this so at the end of the game I was the most alone I've ever been so alone oh my God I remember these images so well Batista made a mistake on Kempès and i saw red i really saw r ouge I jumped the foot forward and the Brazilian player doubled over I wanted to know if there were referees at this world cup I was taken like a child who tastes the jam that his mother reserves for the big occasions the referee showed the red card me el Niño de Oro who came to conquer the world I left through a trapdoor on the sly I stayed with my arm in the air after my fault I cried after the the referee had brandished the punishment I signed myself and left the field I cried and thousands of spectators cried and I said to myself I will have my revenge maybe that's when I understood that my life was a story of revenge exclusions and exploits of light and shadow i don't know if that's where i was excluded that's all i know it was the first and last time i was excluded from the national team because afterwards I never wanted to be alone again and that's also why God made me play so well, it's for that I always made the sign of the cross when I entered or left the field if I had not done so yes I would have had the impression of betraying him and God with the gifts he had given me I can say it yes I can say it God was part of my clan but then I did not yet know that in Barcelona there was a man who thought he was god Jose Luis Nunez the president thought he was god and while I I was leaving Spain through the small door I was soon going to return there through the big Barcelona the long-awaited transfer was waiting for me so I took Tota Chirito and all my tribe to Barcelona another life began then when the doorman of the 'Avenida palace saw us arrive my tribe and me he was scared he had seen kings of presidents movie stars or rock stars come to his hotel but he had not seen me yet and neither my tribe I was arriving in prince ready to conquer the world and I wanted it to be known I will be blamed for all this for a long time it's in the past now and i can talk about it freely when i arrived in the marbled hall of the avenida palace all were at my feet for four months i lived there i had requisitioned the first floor in fact what i didn't see at first that i see now yes now it all seems crystal clear to me it's that i was in a turmoil the business world was grabbing me and would never let me go after i signed my contract on the 4th June 1982 no Argentinian had been so expected in Spain since Evita Peron when she visited Franco in 1947 I was the messiah for some the man to be killed for others and all this hatred and this love were increased tenfold by the the fact that I belonged to FC Barcelona and Nuñez the megalomaniac ah it's sure that our two personalities had little chance of getting along I started by meeting Nunez the great struggle of my life the one that would irrigate my whole life the fight against the powerful of this world who consider players or even human beings in general as a commodity I opened in spite of myself the era of victorious capitalism in sport where only the rich benefit from the material benefits of life I was in the eye of the storm when everything is quiet when no noise is heard just before the fury of the storm takes away while signing my contract i was signing a pact with those i hated most the powerful ones and i was stepping away from those i loved the most the people, the people, the gente but I didn't know it I was young I was a mad dog I thought I could solve everything on the pitch but there in Barcelona even the pitch was going to betray me that's right there one of the most terrible moments of my life these two years in Barcelona the best player in the world arrived in the best club in the world heavenly vision if there is one but no I belonged to the people not to the leaders so we entered a great period of misunderstanding Barce lone is one of the most powerful clubs in the world it has 110,000 year-round subscribers and more than 1,000 Beijing fan clubs in the United States its facilities would make Boca Junior look like an amateur club the Nou Camp is a mythical stadium a cathedral of football Nunez its president was born Basque and my meetings with Basques in Spain were always delicate he runs the club like a personal success no one supports his gaze he only believed in two things discipline and success which disaster what a misunderstanding everything had started so well yet on July 28, 1982 I entered the Nou Camp enclosure to be presented with my teammates to the public so I said to myself this is the moment of truth I did not come here for my own glory but for the glory of the team because I can't win matches on my own that's why I hope we will stick together and become champions of Spain I realize now that we talk a lot when you're young and with all these microphones lined up under my nose I was tempted to say more than I should have my teammates were really nice guys little by little I became friends with some like Schuster or Carrasco with whom I shared a room he was a really nice funny guy he was very talented and he managed to imitate what I did in training when asked what he thought of me he answered

I am impressed by his humility he is a very human person in Argentina he is considered a demigod but he has never forgotten where he comes from his roots poverty he made me realize how much he has had to fight to get where he is and how much he cares about the material conditions of his family he wants her safe he is full of dreams he is so innocent and so eager to succeed the more i became friends with him the more i I was worried about him I was afraid that all this passion that drives him would betray him

I was a mad dog a rabid dog but as soon as I set foot on the field I became another all the teammates I had during my career were aware of it that's why they all respected me and Carrasco said about me

he's like a chameleon on the pitch Diego is transformed he's so sure of himself he's not the same man anymore he seems to have full control of the ball when he runs with the ball and starts dribbling the opposing defenses all the players around of him seem tied up unable to move during our training we just want to be by his side and watch him shine we just want to witness what he is capable of

another man supported me Nicolas Casaus the vice-president of Barça who had spotted me in Argentina it was my sporting father but compared to all the people who wished me harm it was little yet everything had started well with Schuster immediately we understood each other on the pitch the first match at the Nou Camp was a festival we met Zaragoza a free kick two assists 3-0 I released magic from my left foot the Nou Camp and its 120,000 spectators were at my feet but very quickly Spanish football showed its true face that of violence I could not play anymore and as Spanish TV was the worst in the world violent players were never punished already that I had had enough of authoritarian methods of our trainer Udo Lattek that one he drank more beer than a regiment and with him it was really the regiment a real dictator this trainer he wanted us dead I'm sure of it I came from South America and I discovered the war el futbol de muerte ^? incredible not a Sunday without a guy waiting on my physical integrity fortunately there was the European Cup like that day when everything went well I remember it was October 20 we went to play in Belgrade Red Star was a great team in Europe Schuster and I we atomized them the images of our actions traveled the earth in all directions the Serbian players certainly among the best in Europe technically spent half the game watching us play j scored two goals including an extraordinary 4-2 lob the Yugoslavs who are remarkable football connoisseurs gave us a standing ovation for more than a minute at the end of the match when we were playing at our level we were irresistible irresistible me I was having fun playing at the end of practice Lattek was telling me what are you doing Diego and I was going around the pitch picking up the balls so Lattek was yelling at me we pay people to do this my is me I continued because it amused me and because people it was me el Niño de Oro as they had nicknamed me I was aware that FC Barcelona was not a club like the others many had failed here and few had succeeded Carrasco told me

be careful when you go out in the evening monday and tuesday it's ok but if you go out on friday before a match be very careful because the media can destroy you

but I wasn't very careful I never was el Niño de Oro doesn't have to be careful he takes risks he's not afraid and at night my shadow disappears at night Pelusa doesn't need to shine at night I'm myself like on the pitch not the same myself I know it's hard to understand for a European but I'm like that I was injured in the thigh after a months and the troubles started I took a personal trainer Fernando Signorini and I wanted to heal myself everything was so hard I didn't trust the people around me my tribe if my teammates yes but not the leaders of Barcelona nor the staff I always felt an animosity against me after all I was only a sudaca ^? as they condescendingly say a sudaca and when i replayed i replayed very little i caught a virus hepatitis that bedridden me i spent christmas with Tota all alone away from Claudia's argentina and from the world I came from this is one of the hardest times of my life I was installed in my Hollywood villa in Pedralès so very quickly I installed all my band of friends with whom I had grown up in Villa Fiorito I helped a friend of Argentinos Junior Oswaldo Buona to integrate a club of the Spanish second division he lived with us and also Ricardo Ayala who had been abandoned by his parents when he was a child he lived in Esquina the suburb of dad Chirito I took him in and he became my driver I remember when we fished together with many others so I was less alone and I could more easily bear the sarcasm and contempt of the Catalans locked up in my palace with my friends with them no problems representation i was myself it was around this time that i started going out a lot with all my friends we started going out and experiencing barcelona nights on sundays and mondays we went to all the parties exactly like in Buenos Aires a Pedrales I had succeeded in creating a microcosmic Buenos Aires world as for Jorge Cyterszpiler, my childhood friend, he ran the company that bore my name and took care of my image and he established the last link with the Barça from afar I heard Casaus complaining he was disappointed he saw me less in the press he said one day

I'm worried to see him get lost he's changed he's like a tree that needs a stake to grow straight it's not a sporting failure but a human failure we can't talk to him anymore his entourage has erected a wall around him

I explained to him that I needed to be protected but all these leaders they wanted to have me with them they wanted to manipulate me as they pleased but I was escaping from them I was escaping we were going out more and more and I wanted to to feel alive i wanted to avoid falling into a depression i accumulated the exits why did i feel so alone who can tell me i can't it was at this time that i tasted cocaine i was always alone the pitch couldn't give me any more satisfaction since I didn't appear there anymore because of the injuries and the viruses and off the pitch I was like a terminally ill person there were a lot of us taking drugs a lot of other players but only to escape this far too significant shadow in our lives it was necessary to live a little more it only happened to me sometimes it isolated me even more but I thought that I could never damage myself j I was full of this certainty God had chosen me if and I could not fail as elected everything would be allowed to me and it was then that Nuñez wanted to give me lessons in good manners how do you expect me to accept from a guy like Nunez that he tell me what what i have to do was unthinkable Nunez represented the feudal lord reigning over those uneducated little miscreants that were the players i hate people like Nunez i also hated Lattek with his dictator ways so in march 1983 when he was fired j I did everything to get Luis-Cesar Menotti to come and train Barcelona when he arrived I recovered my strength after my hepatitis I was happy to find him even if the World Cup had gone badly Menotti was like me Argentinian he liked to go out he loved women he loved beautiful attacking football together we were going to be the kings of the world with Menotti three months after his arrival we won the Spanish Cup against Real Madrid I had a very good game everyone seemed happy people said talking about me he was unlucky barely arrived he was injured and then this hepatitis next year barça will win everything me too that's what i thought what i wanted everything to win I always played to win Menotti told me to always play to win that's also what he said to other players for Menotti football is like poetry he wrote an essay on football and is one of most erudite men I know he advocates beautiful attacking and fast technical and lively play no doubt about that the junior world champion team played such football and that of 1978 also technical players a lot of attacking players I liked the same football as Menotti but Menotti was coaching in Spain and the philosophy of Spanish football was very far from his that is why he started an altercation via the press with Javier Clemente the Basque coach of Atlético Bilbao who later would coach t the Spain team this man it's incredible that he had so many responsibilities in football we like to remember that I cheated sometimes but Clemente coached teams by advocating anti-play he responded with disdain to Menotti always with this hint of racism towards us little South Americans and the referees were Clemente's friends otherwise they would not have let him act like this it was in this abominable climate that happened September 24, 1983 date of our match against Bilbao a horrible date for football Clemente had a secret weapon against me Goicoetchea who would later have great responsibilities in football as Clemente's assistant at halftime we were leading 2-0 our technique drove the Basques crazy but after twelve minutes in the second half the drama happened I recovered the ball in the middle of the field and I went crazy dribbling the Basques were watching the demonstration I was going towards the goal when Goi coetchea took his momentum from a good ten meters and came to tackle me from behind tackle me shoot me down suddenly I felt that the world was slipping away from me even the Basque newspapers said that it was one of the most serious faults football has ever seen Goicoetchea was called the butcher of Bilbao I went out on a stretcher I thought God had abandoned me again I was alone Menotti asked for Goicoetchea to be banned for life for in the end he got away with ten matches of suspension a lesser evil my ankle was demolished it is Mozart who we are murdering said the Barcelonans the diagnosis came fracture of the malleolus with tearing of the ligaments this injury it left me deep indelible incurable traces in my flesh and in my mind what I thought of football was crushed by Goicoetchea Clemente and their philosophy of football I believed that football was a game I thought that the arabesques the dribbles the goals were t the most beautiful thing in the world I faced jealousy and the envy of players less gifted to handle the ball but more to destroy my dream Villa Fiorito was very far away on September 24, 1983 my life was in pieces like my left ankle observers said that I never played so well again and for years I suffered from this ankle this ankle it was God who gave it to me Goicoetchea wanted to kill God live in the eyes of the world and the world didn't say anything after four months of convalescence I went back to play in Bilbao I was scared but I told myself that we shouldn't be scared Pelusa shouldn't be scared we won 2-1 I scored the two goals for Barcelona but nothing would be the same the divorce was consummated and after a European Cup match against Manchester United where I had to receive infiltrations to play I couldn't play I wanted with all my heart be on the ground but my body wasn't following p I went out at half time under the whistles of the fans I was mad with rage I only wanted to leave Barcelona and their shenanigans their football of death I shouted why why should- I sacrifice myself if when I struggle to play they treat me like this Barcelona was a love story that turned into total misunderstanding it's a shame it's sad but you had to drink the chalice to the dregs on April 30 1984 Bilbao won the league title again and the following week we met them for the Spanish Cup final we lost the match 1-0 Bilbao played their football in defense and against play I couldn't take it anymore it was too much for me Clemente had called me an idiot in the press at the end of the match I started a general fight because a player from Bilbao Sola had insulted me I lost my nerves and a whole gang of Basques fell on me it was a miracle if Goicoetchea did not manage to cripple me again with a jump kick it was unspeakable I was responsible alone responsible without God without anyone to help me but with King Juan Carlos to whom I will later apologize in a letter and millions of Spaniards for spectators this time it was well and truly over the same evening I started to pack my bags I had to flee as quickly as possible this city where I had nevertheless scored 38 goals in 58 matches which could have been the tomb of my football but even at that moment in lowest in my career I always thought I'd get my revenge somewhere else but it was sure

Ardor my heart oh yes that's exactly what I said to myself when I left Barcelona because in fact I can admit it now yes I can say it in fact football was in me but all its surroundings made me vomit these presidents who think they are allowed everything all these wheeler-dealers who manipulate players buy and sell these crooked managers yes all that makes me vomit so I crossed my feet one on the other the sound of the helicopter resounds in my head too much noises too many constraints with Jorge Cyterszpiler we had two offers one from Juventus and the other from Naples Juventus was Turin the Fiat Agnelli I told Jorge no not there they already have a team made up of stars there was Bonieck Platini and three-quarters of the Italian team still a team of stars like in Barcelona and then there was Gianni Agnelli the boss of Fiat no really all that reminded me too much of Barcelona I said to Jorge let's build an empire in Naples there I'll be fine with these people the people it will be like Villa Fiorito yes it will be like Villa Fiorito okay it's a small team that has never won anything okay they almost went down to the second division but then it's ideal for me yes it's ideal Naples it's the south against the north of Italy it's the poor against the rich the powerful everything that I hate and I had to find the game the simple taste of the game because Barcelona and its Nunez had almost succeeded in disgusting me with it we are in 1984 I am 23 years old I am going to reign over Naples and put the ball very small yes it is now that I realize the prophecy of this young boy who came near me at the end of the match lost don't worry one day you will be the greatest player we have ever seen on a pitch so I came here to overshadow the great Vesuvius for this to be the greatest player we have ever seen ever seen on a land to turn that dull old copper into gold to make those people proud Uple vilified trampled underfoot by the powerful of the north yes I come to build an empire here because in Barcelona nothing is possible anymore I was not protected from jealous players like Goicoetchea I had to flee Menotti had resigned I had lost my spiritual father everything was over I saw the new coach Terry Venables an Englishman a gentleman he seemed to understand me he said

what I admire in Diego is that all the players in the team speak of him with love they all love him and worry about him at the same time Diego is a real generous if he achieves something he wants to share

but me I didn't want to share anything with Barcelona anymore because Barcelona didn't share they granted each other so I'm in this helicopter we're flying to the San Paolo stadium they're waiting for me it's the beginning of the afternoon we're on July 5th the weather is nice the shouting comes to me in snatches the sound of the helicopter resounds and I've been in the air since I left Barcelona my heart beats faster ardor my heart I repeat to him and it beats louder and faster and I tell him still ardor my heart and it beats even more here I am going to build my empire and the seventy thousand spectators who filled the San Paolo stadium repeat in unison here he is going to build his empire and we will be this empire and they never said that before and thanks to me they say it they say it and to thank me they sing

O mamma mamma mamma/sai perche mi batte il corazon/ho visto Maradona ho visto Maradona/ô mamma inamorato son^?

yes that's it I allowed them to be in love and to rediscover a bit of their childhood I taught them that the most important thing is this part of childhood that if I played so well it was because I spoke to the child who is in me that if I spoke to God at each of my goals it was because the child who is me who scores the goals had the power to speak to God what I told them when they shouted my name when long Diego Diego came down from the stands it's that you have to respect the child who is in himself despite the vultures who would like to steal him that's it I said here I'm going to build my empire

Naples and I identified each other until death I arrived here by air and left the same way what a road traveled then it was thus ardor my heart still an effort to see your exploits these leaps of joy this life unrestrained Ardor my heart all these Neapolitans they were crazy long before I set foot on their beautiful ground of San Paolo but the possibility that I arrived had really driven them crazy they exulted all this joy that their character naturally inclined to party held back kept hidden repressed before the omnipresence of misery the arrogance of the big cities of northern Italy so when Antonio Juliano nicknamed Totonno the manager of the company sportiva calcio di Napoli learned that I was about to leave Barcelona when he saw the possibility of bringing me to Naples he went to see President Corrado Ferlaino and he told him

it's him it's him we wanted us to wait it's for Maradona that we built this old city forgotten by God whose heart beats aimlessly now everything is clear we know for whom our heart will beat and what will be the goal of our efforts

Barcelona understood that I no longer belonged to them I wanted to leave I told the nice Terry Venables Nunez I also told him through the press because I no longer met him I said I want to leave because one day someone 'one will come and try to kill me on the pitch me what i wanted what i wanted it was simple i wanted to play get back all that joy of Villa Fiorito when i was playing only caring about the time of night that fell for that dona Tota doesn't worry too much even if Tota she knew that I was playing that I was with my best friend with the ball so yes what I wanted was to find the atmosphere of Villa Fiorito all this environment that had seen the birth of and who had made el Niño de Oro me and not another because I knew very well that if I had been born in a rich family in Buenos Aires or elsewhere but rich yes rich and perhaps also blond and very clean not filthy not brown and not poor well el Niño he wouldn't have s completely was the Niño de Oro or he would have been another what he already was but another for myself finally it's poverty it's this adored shantytown that made Pelusa so I wanted to give back to all the slums of the earth what they gave me return their kindness and goodness and Naples loomed and said love me and me I arrived and said Naples love me we wanted to love each other and nothing no one and especially not Agnelli and all his billions could prevent that here I will be at home the Neapolitans were despised by northern Italy like me the sudaca in Barcelona Naples had never won anything like me nothing convincing above all no trophy in Europe, however, you had to beat the Europeans and even better at home to show who was the strongest even before arriving in Naples I was Neapolitan even before signing in Naples the Neapolitans were selling objects bearing my image I had already invaded the city so when Totonno said

it's him it's him we wanted us to wait it's for him that we built this old city forgotten by god whose heart beats aimlessly

when Totonno arrived in Ferlaino's office and repeated the phrase many times Corrado Ferlaino opened the window and the legend the legend that's what is true the legend has it that the blowing of the wind brought Totonno's words in every Neapolitan household so as Barcelona despised Naples as all of Europe despised Naples so Barcelona said with the height of its smugness you want to buy the Niño do you have enough money it is very expensive give us 600,000 dollars down payment so that we know if you are solvent and then the Neapolitans threw up Barcelona every Neapolitan cursed those Catalans who, like the rest of Europe, showed arrogance and contempt for our city with a vanished past and thus every Neapolitan came closer that was it possible is it possible to be closer to form a more perfect communion well each Neapolitan came closer to me and I to him because the story of our lives does not make have only one one and only one each Neapolitan each poor Neapolitan showed what he wanted he took his savings and went to deposit it in an account of the Monte Paschi di Sienna bank and thus in a single day the 600,000 dollars were gathered together and Nunez and Gaspard and all the Catalans and all of Europe well they saw what a Neapolitan was capable of when he wanted something that it wasn't 600,000 dollars that scared him that it wasn't the arrogance and the contempt that would make him recoil no the Neapolitan if he wanted something he had it and that although he was swarthy small and poor yes sir and the Neapolitan returning from the bank Monte Paschi di Sienna he was proud of an almost unavowable pride because he repeated himself constantly it is him it is him that we wanted us to wait it is for him that we built this old city forgotten by god whose heart beats without object and then I was a Neapolitan, my grandmother came is from here that's what I told them when I arrived I had to make two entries into this San Paolo stadium full of the jaws of spectators who came to see me came to see the appearance for a week of Neapolitans had chained themselves to the stadium gate and were on a hunger strike they were reciting give us our Diego of this day they were praying for the club to succeed do everything in their power to snatch me from the clutches of the Catalans in the end they succeeded and the hunger strikers broke free so they too were in the stadium that day it was just the afternoon it was July 5, 1984 and Vesuvius looked tiny compared to the San stadium Paolo 14 TV channels, 400 journalists, 600 photographers, 70,000 Neapolitans who had paid 1,000 lire were waiting to see me arrive I landed and I appeared several hours ago the cheers coming from the stadium filled the void and the silence of the dead city like a Good Friday it's him it's him we wanted us to wait it's for him that we built this old forgotten city of God whose heart beats aimlessly now everything is clear we know for whom our heart will have to beat and what will be the goal of our efforts and already songs in my honor were invented and the ingenuity and the Dionysiac spirit twirled the Neapolitans strived to invent invent again and each one to address his mother O mamma mamma mamma/ sai perche mi batte il corazon/ho visto Maradona ho visto Maradona/ô mamma innamorato son and already I got off the helicopter I entered the field I juggled the ball two or three times and sent it as high as possible possible I wore the colors of Naples I had changed language I was now the Pibe de Oro ^? I was Naples and I could say like thousands of Neapolitans ho visto Maradona innamorato its oh yes it was sweet to my ears to hear those Diego coming down from this crater my San Paolo crater and it was really gray mine the other local hero Vesuvius because he knew that now he was going to fade from my glory because it is here yes here that I was going to build my empire and all the Neapolitans knew it they who were only waiting for one thing it was to shout a long gooooooooooooooooooool that comes to greet honor sanctify one of my goals and I was going to give them goals in spades they only had to bend down to pick them up immediately I felt at home in Naples like at Villa Fiorito exactly the same all the same yes it was like Villa Fiorito the same poverty the same solar joy the same brown people all the same for the first time Naples was proud and came to join the race for Europe Naples ended up in the top five and made a good par course in the Italian Cup all this was just a dress rehearsal and the Neapolitans knew it they saw me little guy on the ground and oh yes like this February 24, 1985 we were playing against Lazio in Rome and then there what a festival I offered three goals and 4-0 a free kick a lob it had been a festival among so many others past or to come my teammates were nice but for me you have to know that every footballer is a lost Villa Fiorito us we are a big and beautiful family even Goicoetchea yes maybe for Goicoetchea I don't know at that time the Italian championship practiced the catenaccio excessive defense a bit like Bilbao but it didn't matter because I had come here to build my empire and nothing I say nothing nothing could stop me here I had all the love I dreamed of because what you have to understand is that I only had one obsession was to reunite with Villa Fiorito and all the love I had been surrounded by I was there so it didn't matter whether it was in Naples or elsewhere as long as the conditions of Villa Fiorito were met and that I was loved this love guided my steps and the Neapolitans I will never forget them the Neapolitans they love me gave everything and even more and I hope to have given it back to them as much as I could what I know is that they lived unique moments thanks to me from the second season the team had strengthened we wanted to hang something we weren't thinking about the title yet but we felt that things were becoming possible and when we were going to play in the stadiums of the cities of the North then there the slogans were even meaner than before in Verona in florence or in Turin they said

Neapolitans welcome to Italy

cholera

with the Jews the Neapolitans

and in Milan at the San Siro stadium the bouquet

what does it stink smell even the dogs hold their noses it's that the terroni are coming the napolitani assholes

so the Neapolitans when they heard that they all began to sing Maradona è meglio è Pelé ^• and they all resumed

eh oh eh oh chi s'ha accato a chist » chi s'ha accato a chill chist' è nu diavulillo e ce ne vonn ciento p'o ferma' Maradona è meglio è Pelé^?

so me when I heard the supporters of the North when I read the signs in the stadium where they had written these insanities so I wanted to be even stronger even stronger and during this second season we all beat them at least once all these northern clubs Verona 5-0 Turin 1-0 Inter 1-0 and Milan 2-1 and each time I scored and sometimes you are not aware of your strength sometimes you delight in a kind of lethargy we are dominated and we tell ourselves that it is God who wants us to be weak but then often when we do not expect it sometimes we create surprise in fact it is a mistake to say create surprise because it's only a surprise for the one who loses and then afterwards you feel strong you realize that it's not a surprise or a miracle that it's deserved that after all we are worth these clubs of rich and arrogant and we start playing another football a magic football and in Naples it is in Naples yes that I understood the influence that I could have on the other players before I had influence on the game and on the score but now here where I build an empire I started to have influence on my teammates then on all the city everyone started saying to each other but after all I'm not that weak no one can decide my destiny for me so my teammates little by little started to play better they understood that they were better than everything that they had been told until now that they were worth more than a few blows of a stick as soon as they opened their mouths and they had Europe from the end of the second season we qualified for the cup of Europe Ferlaino was happy we were all happy to finish in the top three it was to pass in front of a lot of clubs from the North and so we made them doubt the clubs from the North Naples acquired another status and if the insults redoubled they became envious more than arrogant we became imp ortants we were scary at that time Juventus of Turin still dominated Italy Agnelli who had wanted to buy me had built a team of which nine players played in the Italian team and which also included Platini as much to say that Agnelli would have sold the Fiat that belonged to him and would have gone into exile on a desert island if the results hadn't followed, but this generation was getting old and Platini wouldn't be playing for very long anyway it was time for him to hand over that's what I I had decided I liked Platini he was a fine and elegant intelligent player I already felt that he would fail in his ultimate goal the goal of any football player this goal only at 9 years old with my serious look that I have always sported even at Villa Fiorito especially at Villa Fiorito I had proclaimed in front of the cameras I have two objectives the first is to play the World Cup and the second is to win it because you can be on the roof people every Sunday but if you don't participate in the World Cup and if you don't succeed you don't go down in history, but my name had to be written in a letter of fire and that I was already convinced of that at 9 years old and even before I had already played a World Cup and I wanted my revenge a complete and decisive revenge so that after Naples it is the world that loves me who does not feel this need to be loved cannot understand the meaning of my words so i took my tribe with me and we arrived in mexico i was close to my darling Amsud and there i said here i am going to build an empire i am going to make this place inhabited by the inca gods a new one Villa Fiorito the Argentine selection had changed a lot a whole generation had turned the page but the new coach Carlos Bilardo came to see me in Naples he told me

Diego you are golden I will build a team around you of which you will be the captain

Bilardo I like him for that because he had seen that I was turning stone teammates into gold very few people knew it so had had a feeling of it at that time he knew it he had seen it in me to say the truth when i started playing with this argentinian team i realized that it was far from its predecessor i even think that the 1982 team could have beaten this one by 10-1 but the difference fundamental is that the team of 1986 was hungry it was enraged and as Bilardo made it play in a not shimmering way it was the target of criticism coming from all sides this caused its cohesion and prevented any letting go yet I can say that I was really tired before this World Cup in Europe and especially in Italy you have to fight always fight with all your strength it requires a lot of sacrifices for a South American player like me because it is essential to know how to perform the same gesture for play the ball but also to recover it when it is lost in Argentina a player can lose the ball and no longer worry about it then that's the big difference the intensity of the work and if Naples gave me a lot of love this overload of work the pressure and mad love of the Neapolitans who wouldn't allow me to leave my house even to walk for a few hours and quietly smell the air without a riot occurring the misplaced curiosity of the most passionate but also the most cynical in the world and these too rare moments of joy because devoid of innocence it was Villa Fiorito okay but an adult Villa Fiorito and I was I stay and I will stay this child with brown hair curls who juggled at halftime of professional matches it was this child that we were trying to kill or possess which came to the same thing after all and I this child I wanted to keep him intact this child who feared his shadow and with was blessed by God so when a journalist came to see me before the World Cup I told him everything I thought I told him about this intense and titanic fight that each man fights with himself but which in my house took incredible proportions i told him

I feel so alone I feel abandoned fortunately my mother is with me but I can tell you that in the morning when I see her I tell her Tota mamita one of these days we will throw everything away and we will leave from here very far far

there had been stories during this second year in Naples my love life was not going as I thought Claudia was far away but you must not let yourself go too hard My heart is burning but very quickly they saw that I could take it upon myself I took it upon myself I overcame all of that and acquiesced to Bilardo's directives even though I didn't like them I didn't care I made my way in Argentina two great football traditions s clash that can be summed up in a Menotti-Bilardo confrontation Menotti represents the romantic face of footballers who handle the ball to the rhythms of tango this football had its heyday in the 1940s they are my great predecessors like Di Stephano or Manuel Moreno Menotti had given pride of place to this romantic football focused on the offensive where we would never have marked a player individually where the zone defense was a trademark Bilardo represented him the efficiency l he dark side of this same football where cheating was in order and also violence sometimes a rough and not very technical football of gauchos Argentina never stopped navigating between these two shores which are a little the two sides of 'a same Janus but I didn't care to tell the truth I didn't care I came to get my had to take my revenge and Bilardo or another little mattered to me we arrived in Mexico as a tight-knit team forty days before everyone Mexico had just suffered a terrible earthquake I had separated from my friend and agent Jorge Cyterszpiler which had almost led me to bankruptcy in Barcelona and I wanted to build my empire in this old empire in the middle of the ruins Bilardo had said we arrive first because we want to be the last to leave he had formed a defensive team where I was to take charge of the creation with Jorge Burruchaga and Jorge Valdano ah Valdano my great friend a loyal Menotti a poet r omantic he was the real spiritual son of Menotti same playboy look he recited poems and moved around with a library when he played for Argentina always with his nose stuck in books I like him Valdano it's an honest man he had trouble adapting to the Bilardo regime but he got used to it like all of us the instructions were one thing the law of the field another and the law of the field was my part not that of Bilardo, but it was during this World Cup that, talking with Valdano, I realized that I had a new enemy, a man who was against the players against Villa Fiorito, a powerful man who had never played and who had the players as a commodity Joao Havelange the boss of FIFA ^? and this enemy I was going to keep him all my life Joao Havelange had decreed that the matches of the World Cup would be played at noon in order to please televisions all over the world and to collect more money but at noon in Mexico it is 45 degrees if football is to belong to people like Havelange who only think about money and performance then football will die there will be no more talk of romance or other things of the same sort no everything will no longer exist and the game will be killed maybe that's what he's looking for when I see all these players who start doping who inject themselves with steroids like nandrolone or even creatine which very strangely is authorized ah yes because that's real doping sir everyone has their honor but for some it's in the wallet isn't it so when I see these players I understand them Havelange and Sepp Blatter his second they are capitalists for them football is an activity p professional like any other it's because of them if there is real doping because they impose schedules and rhythms of competition that a human being cannot support finally I will talk about it again my dear and intimate enemy but what I know what I know is that one day we will say he was right the Pibe he was right Diego was telling the truth at the time everyone was silent everyone was afraid and yet Valdano and I said it I shouted it in the press that I didn't want to be taken for an idiot that if this continued we would be playing at 5 am so that the TVs could broadcast our matches all over the world he made us play the bugger at noon at noon in June in Mexico we were looking for air on the ground we kept asking for small bags of water to quench our thirst and moreover Havelange he had the nerve to answer me that I should shut up and that the players had better play rather than complain but this dear Havelange who makes him earn his fortune thanks to who he is what he is thanks to the players so I shut up I decided to answer on the pitch he didn't know Havelange what awaited him he didn't know otherwise c is sure he would have acted differently oh yes that he didn't know and all the skeptics they didn't know either the first match against the Koreans was strange there was a little tae-kwon do but very little football though from that first match, somewhat shrewd observers saw that I was present in the skin of a winner on the pitch I gave up two goals and I was in charge of the team I was captain Bilardo that we nicknamed big nose made me captain i was there to show the world what i could do i was there to win the second game against the italians was looming all the observers gave us losers and the start of the game proved them right since a penalty was converted by Altobelli ah the Italians I knew them well and they also knew me well for two years I showed them more and more but they no longer counted Gentile in their ranks oh no this Gentile he was retired and in addition I had launched an appeal afterwards the match against Korea saying that if it was not possible to play because of too many faults then I would go home I had preferred to warn because only against the Koreans there had been 32 unforced errors on me then i had said if i can't play if the referees don't protect the players then i will go home and all the footballers who love football who belong to the universal Villa Fiorito agreed with me it had to be the game depended on it then against Italy there were faults but not too many not more than usual finally I believe anyway me I was calm and serene sure of my strength he was so far away the kid of 1982 who was taking revenge against the Brazilians oh yes he is was buried that one now you would have to be stronger than me to fight it would not be enough to make mistakes the anti-game would not be enough to prevent me from taking my revenge winning the World Cup the second part of my dream so the Italians thought they were holding the victory well but I came out of my reserve and with a flick of my paw a subtle kick, very gently, with astonishing precision, I slipped the ball out of Galli's reach Galli was going to be my scapegoat the years that followed before becoming my friend when he would play a diabolical or divine pawn in Naples the two adjectives would be attached to me in turn according to the festive dress that I will put on throughout my life in the second round we played against Uruguay really the game of enemy brothers and there I started to raise my game to mind-blowing heights and I brought this sweet team from Argentina to play on the same register as me so h as many of my teammates felt it was possible yes it was possible some doubted at the start of the competition I know some doubted even Valdano was scared he said

a team cannot be reduced to a single player would it be Maradona

but I knew my strength my weaknesses like these recurring back pains which because of a problem of growth made me suffer excruciating pains regularly which confined me to bed the doctors said that they could not do anything that the reason was for a part psychological psychological I wouldn't give a fuck it was all this tension that came to form a knot in my sciatic nerve and that official medicine could not do anything about it I read that Nobel Prize winners for medicine invented a device capable of measure the energy currents that pass through the body it seems that if one of these currents is blocked a crisis occurs throughout the body but what to do doctors think they can do anything they think they know better than anyone what is good for you and then there was my ankle my Goicoetchea ankle as I called it from Barcelona it always made me suffer and cortisone was often my companion to be able to play j ust before our next game I had to undergo three infiltrations and what a game England just that our colonizer the Falklands war four years earlier during the 1982 World Cup some of my teammates had parents engaged in the war of liberation against the English las Malvinas his Argentina ^? said the banners in the stadiums four years later so we were leaving for a revenge of the Falklands war but on the field this time England what a story Argentina as a whole stood up behind our team it was a pleasure to see and us it gave us exceptional strength the meeting first took place in a completely normal way we had the ball we were technically superior everything was going the best in the world but me I felt a strength boiling in me which if I let it take hold would devastate all incredible strength before the game I had seen Valdano watching me take inventory of my technique during the warm-up and I know he saw it he saw this strength that emanated from me I don't know if the English felt it what I know is that they saw it in the second half at 0-0 I started a crazy run and then the ball bounced and a player English wanted to free her but he made a mistake meaning and he sent it to his keeper Shilton me I followed and I jumped but I saw that Shilton was ahead and he had his arms so my left fist went up and I think it was he the one who sent the ball into the goal I believe so and the referee whistled goal ah what a story it was an incredible thing it's true that it was cheating but I don't really know anyway it has happened to all the great champions from Platini to Zico to Pelé to score a goal one day with the hand I said after the match that it was the hand of the god was it the hand of God maybe well God always helped me so the English shouted everyone shouted but I still felt this strength in me and I had not let it express itself certainly not in this false goal but after all if the referee does not hadn't seen is it my fault or the referee's fault why when a player makes a big mistake we blame the referee and why when I make a big mistake e it is only up to me I would like to understand I scored with my hand and the referee did not see it and he validated the goal the referee is a full player in a football match if he misses a fault it's the game it's an incident like any other I am not a saint and have never claimed this title obviously all this plays into the bacchettoni's game ^? these white-collar workers who compensate for their lack of talent with a critical and moralizing spirit that descends from the top of their social condition and that's why I heard them shouting in the distance I heard the clamor rising so I made up my mind to let my strength express itself I said to myself Ardor my heart show them that your feet are also from God it was a ball that would have been innocuous for anyone else even for Pelé the first of the bacchettoni I am ten meters inside my camp sixty meters from Shilton I receive the ball and there I say to myself in a split second here you are going to build your empire I know what this empire tastes like ten years earlier I had played a friendly match with Argentina at Wembley and I executed almost the same chance at the time I tried to put the ball at the far post out of reach of the keeper and Hugo my brother told me you should have tried the first post then I receive the ball and immediately by a pirouette e t a rake I put myself in the direction of the English goal and disorganizes two opposing players I saw Valdano leave alone I push the ball twice which crosses the halfway line an Englishman runs after me another is in front of me I dribble it I accelerate they are all running after me I arrive near the penalty area I am five meters away I see Valdano unmarked I dribble with a right hook another Englishman tries to belt me ​​I do a little goat jump to avoid it all goes very quickly the goalkeeper arrives and another Englishman Valdano is still unmarked I bring the ball back with my left foot I bring it back just in front of me at the same time as the goalkeeper goes out in my feet I think of Hugo especially the first post useless to look for the difficulty I make a very small hook that feigns Shilton I feel another Englishman behind my back who tackles me very hard I push the ball into the empty goal I fall I get up the stadium the world holds its breath the whole world is looking for its way blow I give it to him I run I run to the corner post and I escape I challenge I overcome I erase my shadow I jump fist in the air God kiss me I'm on top of the world on top of my empire the bacchettoni have switched off their television set Havelange plays water polo his favorite sport an action of sixty meters and eleven seconds during which I had dribbled Reid and Beardsley Butcher Fenwick then again Butcher and Shilton six players over the half of the team Shilton the English goalkeeper will say after match

I will never forget Maradona's composure on this action the ball seemed literally stuck to his left foot at the end of the action he was surrounded very closely by three defenders but with a jerk while he was at the end of the race he managed to unbalance them to pass me to score I had never seen that

I had done well to let this strength that was bubbling in me express itself and Giusti one of my partners will say

I don't think he himself immediately realized what he had just achieved, he must have realized it much later

well he is wrong because I had seen everything it is almost as if I had seen this goal before achieving it first when I arrived near Shilton I had thought of Hugo again and there in a fraction of a second I remembered my brother's remark but it's true it's true what I say I saw everything felt everything before it happened but above all something fundamental happened for me to succeed this feat Valdano and Burruchaga accompanied me throughout the action offering themselves as an option of passing and complicating the task of the English defenders it was very important for example just before avoiding Shilton when I shot with the left foot I felt that Butcher gave me a very brutal blow but I did not hurt the emotion was stronger than the pain I thought that we had won this very special match I thought of my mother at my teammates to my friends to everyone who believed in me and in this team so criticized and I started to think that we could be champions s of the world that's how when the team found themselves in the locker room everyone shouted Maradona Maradona and I looked at them and I shouted Argentina Argentina even in the locker room I was raising my teammates I didn't had only this dream because I loved them they were all Villa Fiorito players like my Neapolitan teammates my dream was to bring them all with me to the heights of the game because I had access to God and I wanted them everyone has access to God and I wanted the spectators and viewers who were from Villa Fiorito not the bacchettoni those from Villa Fiorito to have access to God because if God had not been there we would not have beaten the English and God was there with me so with the Argentina team to win this World Cup to fully realize my dream completely and the newspapers were commenting it is no longer a question of who of Platini and Maradona is the best but who of Maradona and Pelé is the best and it was French newspapers that wrote that because their Platini was my rival at that time and it was he who came to my rescue when they asked him about my first goal he answered I think his second goal counted double A lord that I tell you his answer was clear crystal clear and pan in the head of the journalist certainly one of these bacchettoni ah let's talk about the bacchettoni their worthy representative it is indeed Pelé here is indeed an untouchable player who can say the greatest nonsense and for whom journalists have the greatest leniency here is an example of bacchettono a smooth and hypocritical white collar a moralizer Pelé is a football official who has never raised a team on his own a team considered weak he had the chance to play with players almost as good as him in one of the best teams of all time but now Pelé because he represents Mastercard or whatever uch global company feels obliged to hold forth and judge from the top of its pedestal no one says that it expresses itself for nothing or worse to say nonsense that we welcome like holy bread Platini loves power so he will be corrupted also we are against power or with power there are no alternatives but Platini is not a bacchettono he does not judge other players he is not the grand inquisitor me I answered on the field because I wanted Pelé, like Havelange, his great friend, to understand that this World Cup was mine and that no one could steal it from me, not this one, as a journalist wrote

never in the history of football has a player been as vital as influential as decisive as Maradona for his national team on this level Diego was more for Argentina than Pelé for Brazil

it was not me who said it was him not me him and after the final I was able to say I am happy not to have scored it is the proof that we have a great team and pan that will teach them to Pelé and to all the bacchettoni in fact it was Menotti who best commented on my match against England, saying in his always surprising language

Diego is the summary of the genetic information contained in the entire history of Argentine football he is the product of the history of a people and their traditions he is an ideal prototype it is undoubtedly this perfection that makes a lonely man

Menotti I'm not sure that our association has ever been beneficial but what I'm sure is that nobody understood me better nobody the summary of the genetic information contained in the whole history of Argentine football there is only Menotti can talk so we don't understand anything but we feel that it's intelligent after this match against England I was fine I felt reassured in agreement with myself it was rare enough to be noted but my ankle was starting to really hurt me for the semi-final against Belgium I played with a left shoe four sizes larger than mine and several infiltrations of cortisone and other painkillers including addiction to Barcelona, ​​Naples and as a team from Argentina was beginning to affect my health and especially my weight, but no one told me at the time if I aged prematurely in this way if my weight was a yo-yo launched in a mad race so little by little I acceded used to using drugs to calm my Goicoetchea ankle and my back if I accepted all this it was to play play again what my life would have been if I had not been able to play if I had spent my days at watching my teammates from the back of the infirmary I couldn't not assume my role I was the Pibe de Oro what the hell I had this infinite awareness of my rank as a footballer of my responsibilities on the pitch of my duty to live -towards my teammates and towards my public I never wanted to depart from my responsibilities unlike others who spend their time hiding on a pitch I wanted to be at Villa Fiorito but already at 9 years old when I was interviewed I had this serious and responsible air that will never leave me this pride in my eyes this security in my game not in me unfortunately I did not have this security concerning my person and that would play havoc with me rounds but on the pitch I was the Pibe de Oro off the te rrain I was me and I only wanted one thing to return to the field and if for that I had to buy all of Italy I would have done it because there on the field I was myself and that there my shadow no longer dictated its law to me on the pitch I was the captain I was close to God off the pitch nothing differentiated me from other people God was absent on the pitch the joy and lightness of playing and scoring off the pitch from the pitch the pressure and the responsibilities I'm not made for I look like this happy albatross in the air and so sheepish on the ground after that game against England I really thought we could go all the way and Jorge Valdano who had doubts about this team at the beginning also believed in it, he also became convinced like me because of me because of this second goal which had been for Valdano a real goal from god

when Diego scored that extraordinary goal against England which has become a symbol of international football I was at his side on the pitch and I accompanied the action first as a partner and a potential receiver of a pass then quickly as a fascinated spectator after the match in the shower Diego explained to me that during the whole action he had been looking for a space to address the ball to me and put me in a position to score but that he had not found it and that he had therefore gone to the end out of obligation in a certain way it annoyed me that he had time to think about looking for me when he seemed to have no time to solve the immediate problems of dribbles that followed one another for me it was incredible listening to that I suddenly felt by his side like a very modest footballer

and yet it was not with Valdano and Burruchaga I had two magnificent lieutenants on the field and that is how the match against Belgium was a simple formality some newspapers headlined the next day Maradona 2 Belgium 0 it was not not good for the rest of the team and that had irritated and disappointed me the journalists had always irritated me in fact this match against Belgium I was waiting for it impatiently because it was the revenge of 1982 this first completely failed match where coach Guy Thys had me in a pincer movement this time it was very different in fact it was the opposite ah this old Belgian wizard I liked him but not to the point of leaving him the hope of starting again twice in a row the same blow from the start I took charge of sounding the charge with my oversized shoe and my cortisone injections with all my pride which consisted in never complaining and quickly after a dazzling start on an opening along the line of surface of r repair I took my ball and scored the first goal the second was just as simple there was no opening because it was a personal action I dribbled past four Belgians and scored Guy Thys will say later

I don't know what to do against an alien

we were in the final against Germany I orchestrated the game in the final because Lothar Matthaüs was marking me close and I was starting to get tired I played team service and when the Germans came back to 2-2 at at the end of the match I wasn't scared I felt the strength in me which was just waiting to express itself it was there lurking I still had enough left to turn the match around all of a sudden kidney with a glance and a kick I propelled Burruchaga towards the goal a bright opening for a third goal which gave us the victory when I saw the ball enter slowly I wanted suddenly to be in Buenos Aires we were world champions it was the supreme victory I completely realized my dream I have the memory of a very intense joy but perhaps not as strong as I would have it thought on a personal level at least I have seldom been so happy as during the month that the World Cup lasted and when success came i It seemed almost natural to me so I went up to the presidential rostrum and took the cup from the hands of Joao Havelange he looked at me with his accomplice Sepp Blatter and I clearly saw that it was not the happiest day of his life but he couldn't do otherwise I didn't care what won the day especially when I received the World Cup it was the feeling of having to share share with the Argentinians, I don't think we can imagine what success has meant for the greatest number of them, but another people felt an immense feeling of pride, the Neapolitans because it was a bit like their victory, it was their Pride to them, poor dark-haired Neapolitans hated by the rest of Italy for having Maradona in their team, my victory was theirs and after celebrating this World Cup in Buenos Aires, it was Naples that received me as a hero I was still in the Mexico euphoria of the Aztec stadium when I arrived in Naples to realize with Naples to achieve the same exploits as with Argentina I wanted to raise Naples to the top of the Italy of Europe what do I still know I wanted the best for these people so used to losing and who finally felt ready to even defeat fate in Naples I was known and recognized I now lived on the hill of Prosilippo and I only went out at night to forget all the pressure of the day at night I would have liked to be anonymous I only asked one thing to be quiet and that was denied to me will someone understand one day that I didn't ask for much just to be quiet and live my life with my family and my friends this tribe so dear to me because t was a microcosmic and reconstituted Villa Fiorito for seven years that I will live in the Parthenopean city I will never be able to walk quietly down the street, even down the main street in front of my house or smell the oxygenated air of my hill I be beleaguered oh yes they got me loved these dear Neapolitans but what I wanted was to lead a simple life and have a drink with my friends and that my destiny forbade me I only went out in the car and at night and there as I was recognized I didn't I kept escaping from my shadow this Pibe de Oro that we were trying to touch to feel to apprehend as a sacred thing I'm not looking for excuses I just want people to understand that this life this glory that I had to assume was only a prison and that only the pitch gave me back my self-confidence the pitch where Diego and Maradona were one the pitch where I gave joy the pitch where everything that was forbidden to me outside seemed to me possible the land an area of ​​freedom a little paradise for me when life real life was just hell what is there to live in hell there is no life in hell there is no there is only the search for a meaning this poor sense of me this sense I looked for it in the artificial paradises because in any case the pa radishes off the field could only be artificial I'm having a hard time Burning my heart I'm having a lot of trouble seeing all this in a logical way it's sure that the South American temperament needs to party to go out in nightclub but me me I was of course like that and I don't deny it could I what I deny is the inevitability that surrounded my love affair with Naples what I deny is this fatality that pinned me to the ground very close too close to my shadow in Naples cocaine is everywhere it is impossible to live in Naples at a certain level of popularity or wealth without having to deal with these men who are said to be of honor who make up the camorra ^? from the first year I was invited to private parties as soon as I took a step somewhere hordes of paid photographers by whom I do not know God knows hordes of photographers took pictures of me with other men from the men of honor as soon as the success was Neapolitan, that is to say as soon as I returned from Mexico as soon as I took charge of the team as soon as I had, as with Argentina, two lieutenants, the Brazilian Careca and Giordano we were the magica ^• from this year 1986 which was that of all the successes I was more prisoner than ever of Naples of the men of honor of Ferlaino and of my image during this third season when the press interviewed me I answered in the third person when talking about myself he scored a good goal he had a good game some people found it pretentious I didn't take myself for God for Caesar or whoever else God for him knows but I wanted to escape from my own image this shadow that clung to my co rps and which was growing until it suffocated me preventing me from moving a little like the wings of the albatross would another life have been possible I don't know God knows God knows everything but me out of the field I knew nothing or not much which was not enough have you ever read with great happiness books of writers whose life seemed a poor draft someone can excel in his art and to be profoundly awkward as soon as he leaves it I had no acquaintance with men of honor but I knew one thing they were not bacchettoni they were not decent people my mistake was to believe that they were part of the gente during this third season Naples will trace a deep and indelible furrow on Italy this furrow will bear my name Diego Maradona Naples Italian champion who also won the Italian Cup it was for the Neapolitans more beautiful than a World Cup was Toton's prophecy no that was coming true

it's him it's him we wanted us to wait it's for him that we built this old city forgotten by God whose heart beats aimlessly

it's me il Pibe de Oro on the roof of the world and so alone it's the forfeiture that watches for the one who is at the top the night of the title all Naples came to a boil ah that this joy of the Neapolitans gave pleasure to see all Naples mad raging drunk gone on a dionysian carnival that lasted seven days seven days when the earth stopped spinning and i was sanctified it was all perfectly orchestrated by the nameless octopus-like men stretching their tentacles in the most closed corners nothing escapes them and how me so naive so borrowed from the field could I have foreseen and avoided their stranglehold it is the bacchettoni who will laugh at this fate it will make them laugh they had planned it them those who sigh admitting that a great sportsman is nothing if he is not exemplary what is exemplarity I don't know anymore they don't know either God knows it my fourth season was exhausting we talked too much about me about my escapades and about this presumed son who was exhibited in the press we spoke little about football we failed for the title but the Neapolitans remained confident they said better is a single scudetto ^? won like lions than twenty-two won like Agnelli but the following season I showed my fatigue I couldn't take it anymore Guillermo Coppola my new agent found me totally depressed

what amazed me he said is that he had no taste for anything he went to training and then wandered around his house watching video tapes all day and even at night he was like a prisoner in his own house i asked him what was wrong he replied that he was forbidden to lead a normal life because of the supporters people sometimes climbed the trees in the street to see him in her house Naples had promised her a better protected house to preserve her privacy but she had never come

I was at my wit's end exasperated by all this pressure that was beyond me I needed more and more cortisone more and more treatment and more and more parties until the early morning because more and more I felt this pressure when I was on the pitch yes even on the pitch I felt my growing shadow I saw it was going to grab me there was no doubt also at that time I stopped going to training but every Sunday I took it upon myself I was always the best and if my coaches understood sometimes with difficulty sometimes more easily that I needed air my partners understood very well because they would have given everything for me to be at their side on Sunday that's all that it mattered to them that I was good to play on Sunday so if I had to do without training anyway they knew that I didn't need it tactics all that it was me who invented it and them that was enough for them but Ferlaino began to show his true face that of a president who like all presidents took the players for employees but I was the Pibe de Oro so I was not an employee I had given everything to this city I expected a minimum of consideration I didn't ask for much and I always did my job better than anyone so I went to see Ferlaino in his office I told him I have to change my air I can't take it anymore I I loved this city as it loved me but now that the empire is built I want to leave Ferlaino he looked me in the eye and he said to me I see your determination Diego he still called me Diego it' is funny no but win the European Cup first and you will have your transfer Bernardo Tapia ^• came to see me he told me come to Marseille don't worry I want to win the European Cup and I want to do it with you and me wanted to go with Bernardo Tapia because he looked nice and made an impression n at the controls of his private plane so when Ferlaino said win the European Cup first and you will have your transfer afterwards so I said to myself this European Cup it belongs to you and I worked to win it I I remotivated myself I let this strength that had been in me since Villa Fiorito speak for itself since I had felt it the first time when at 3 years old I was offered my first ball and I had slept with it and we won this European Cup after a grueling quarter-final against Juventus in Turin and a 2-0 defeat in the first leg the newspapers had headlined Maradona plays too fast for his teammates but in the second leg we all played at the same speed and we won 3-0 in the semi-final against Bayern Munich where in the first leg we made it 2-2 where I had played with six infiltrations and where Beckenbauer had said even on one leg Maradona is too strong and yet Beckenbauer it is rather rare that he praises a player if he is not German in fi nal against stuttgart i gave three assists and scored one goal out of five goals scored by our team i was happy really happy with this new success but now ferlaino had to keep his promise yes he had to keep his promise i went to argentina me rest and when in the newspapers I discovered that Bernardo Tapia had come to Naples and had left empty-handed so there I refused to return to Naples and that's where it all started I married Claudia because I loved him and to be a good father to my two adored granddaughters Giannina and Dalma, my marriage was criticized when at the same time Borg was getting married with so much pomp, only me, nothing was passed on to me because a good number of important people were not invited I had gathered the whole team from Naples all my friends long-time friends from Villa Fiorito and Esquina my father's village peasants from the Neapolitan countryside and fishermen from Margellina that I I had met and who had taken me on their boat I paid millions of dollars for everything so that we all form a huge Villa Fiorito at Luna Park in Buenos Aires the bacchetoni fell on me yes I was a nouveau riche yes I had expensive tastes yes I had fun no sportsman or artist before me was so much reproached for being himself a simple man without education and proud of his brood and his friends during this time in Naples he was I could see that a campaign was being organized against me I thought that my loved ones my family my friends were no longer safe in this city a steel ball had pierced the windshield of my car my sister's apartment had been ransacked everything was done to intimidate me they didn't want me to leave they told me that the Neapolitans felt betrayed by my desire to leave but I had given them everything I knew that I couldn't do more I was exhausted at that same time that Il Mattino published a photo of me with a camorist family taken years earlier when I had agreed to come to a party in my honor it was also at this time that I knew that Ferlaino had shares in Il Mattino I felt the trap closing the north of Italy wanted my skin and if we succeeded in destroying my image it was all good for Ferlaino and the many advertisers who owed me fortunes moreover Napoli was very quick to lead a legal action against the diarma my production company and Ferlaino who had told the press Maradona will continue to play in Naples or will not play anywhere anymore I was surrounded so I got motivated again because a deadline was coming a new World Cup so I recalled this strength I probed my heart and I believe that's where yes that's where the first time I let myself go to introspection because there is no there was no more he or Diego there was the immeasurable able injury that only wanted to open and swallow me up I said Ardor my heart and Naples won a new championship Naples was less happy but I wanted to show him that I loved him that I loved him but that I couldn't take it anymore so after this title I retired to a specialized clinic in order to regain my 1986 form unfortunately I was paying for all my efforts my dissolute life these painkillers and these incessant pains the ankle then the back the back then the ankle my head in a vice my football in a vice my life in a vice that tightened the vice I don't know God knows and will judge the living and the dead the World Cup was being played in Italy it was a last challenge a challenge against myself for myself as much as for my supporters Bilardo was still the coach but many of my friends were tired or retired Valdano had left and Burrachaga was coming back from injuries we started very badly against Cameroon which left us beat 1-0 after I played as one agonizes a real agony a fight against myself against my shadow against the shadow of myself each match was played on the razor's edge and Argentina were lucky God didn't have me not give up against Brazil in the second round I felt my strength trying to find its way into me I let it express itself and in a breakaway in one kick I became il Pibe de Oro again I offered a goal came out of nowhere in Caniggia my accomplice who replaced Valdano we had the right to meet Italy in Naples I totally found myself for this match I was at home near my dear Neapolitans and I set the pace for this meeting we qualified thanks to my shot on goal which I shot last always last to take my responsibilities but then I don't know if I had known this final will remain like a nightmare Caniggia was not there suspended by a referee who applied the rules to the letter Burruchaga was far from his form and me with my ankle and my cortisone I couldn't take it anymore during the anthems Italy booed Argentina I didn't think it was possible boo my country I couldn't believe my ears c it's true that we weren't playing well it's true that I represented Napoli it's true that we had eliminated Italy but there was a deafening din the camera which filmed the teams lined up stopped on me I said hijo de puta ^? and all the Italians read on my lips my resentment against them the game was empty pointless away from the game away from Villa Fiorito we were defending and couldn't do much else we were defending and standing up to the Germans who weren't succeeding nothing good either and it took this very generous penalty a few minutes from the end a given penalty offered for the reunification of Germany a penalty whistled by the nice Mr. Codesal well, but Mr. Codesal who had never refereed at Wasn't this level Mr. Havelange's son-in-law football no longer exists only politics takes precedence and even politics no longer exists only economics takes precedence my dream of a second success crumbled under the blows of powerhouse el gente had had the right to speak for far too long I had to lose I had to eliminate the Pibe my tears were seen by millions of viewers because Italy was still whistling Argentina the Portegnes were were singled out as people who were not very popular I was crying and I looked like Parthenopeia, one of the two sirens who would have liked so much to hug Ulysses and who had gotten lost and then stranded in the Bay of Naples even my song was useless my song was just a swan song

You will walk with me as long as my body casts its shadow wrote the poet well that's what Diego said to Maradona or the opposite I don't really know who is who I lost the landmarks that made up my identity I know that from the outside people believe that I am multiple but I never stopped being a poor child who grew up in Villa Fiorito and who only wanted to play football I don't want to cry and I I don't want to make you cry either no no I'm just saying that ah yes Diego Maradona it's me it's me who fled Italy like a thief that day in March 1991 I was becoming paranoid I was blamed for some traces of cocaine found in my urine after this exhausting match against Bari some traces dating back four five days that's what the doctors will say the doctors I hold them in horror and that's why that's why for some traces of cocaine nobody didn't want to help me I was waiting for the spell to come and get me out of there I was waiting for a sign of fate that someone comes and says come on Diego we're leaving you're going to look elsewhere the weather is nice and you will have a field a small rocky field where you can play with your friends that's playing with your friends a field at Villa Fiorito no referees no FIFA no journalists just the joy of kicking the ball no stakes no responsibilities and no pressure Diego is suffocating let him breathe make way but no nothing came so I sank for a long time deeply Ferlaino he bears the responsibility for it he didn't want me to leave yet I was saying I was screaming let me go let me I gave you everything I can't take it anymore I was waiting for someone to give me the hand hand and as nothing came the cocaine it came the cocaine it was everywhere in Naples the more I sank the more there was I had my pockets full of it I was sick I was sick I shouted it and we got heard guilty and I was sentenced there was a very short time that cocaine it was considered a dopant and there were only a few traces but those who govern us said guilty and they threw me to the nettles and I wanted to play so badly I couldn't do anything else I didn't know how to do anything else we took Maradona and trampled on him making him look like a bastard oh Maradona wasn't a saint he never claimed anything like that didn't you Maradona but yes Diego you him you know very well that I am not a holy Maradona he just wanted to listen to Diego the little Dieguito who had remained for everyone the Pibe de Oro the little kid who had had self-awareness too early the awareness of his responsibilities the awareness of be myself what will Giannina and Dalmita think of your deviations Maradona I didn't want to hear anything more I had raised my hand and said help me and they had closed the lid on my head and turned a deaf ear I had said I'm prisoner of Naples of Ferlaino from the pressure of myself I I have always been a prisoner of myself alone with this single idea of ​​my own perfection which isolated me even more and more Maradona was dead FIFA had buried him for fifteen months fifteen long months where I had to endure terrible treatment psychologists rushed to my bedside and I had to tell my life as if we could not understand what had brought me so far as if it was not visible like the nose in the middle of the face I was sick who knows I didn't know what illness was before I was sick and isolated illness reinforces isolation I had the impression that no one could help me and I no longer felt God since my only joy had been taken away from me on ground I had given everything to Argentina even in Barcelona and Naples all Naples had played 22 matches without me between 1985 and 1990 and they had only won six but now I had no taste for anything I was idle and what did the psychologists say at the end of their analysis it is necessary that Maradona returns to football to finish his therapy they said under the leadership of Ruben Navedo their boss his reintegration into football was a fundamental notion in the treatment he could not accept such a fall the circle was complete it was perfect Ruben Navedo passed a third of his time with me i never got intimate with him i don't know if his work paid off he said

the first phase of therapy focused on the desire to return to football the second on the need to recharge his batteries within his family cocaine had caused him to lose his status as a subject throughout his career he was an idealized object then denigrated he he had to find his condition as a subject, this is how through his return to football and by relying on his family he gradually found this situation

so i tried to come back but my old bones were finding it harder and harder to support me i felt all the effects of my sleepless nights which were weighing me down so i came back then left again then came back to sevilla then newell's old boys then nothing oh all that was not very important there were only excuses because I wanted to play again but could no longer bear the slightest pressure especially in a championship year it was too long much too long and the fear of relapsing was too strong I no longer wanted to go to the end of myself I only occasionally felt this force irrigating me this force which had kept me at the top for so long it is certainly what one calls being overtaken by one's shadow and then there was a twist of fate Argentina who had lost their game ended up completely thwarting Colombia in a 1994 World Cup qualifier 0-5 a volley the likes of which had not been seen in years decades and against Colombia one of our dearest south american enemies i was in the stands of the monumental stadium in buenos aires during that match the argentinians were in the stadium and knew i was there well everyone watching the score go up dangerously seeing the defeat the rout of ours began to shout long Diegoooooo Diegoooooo everyone began to sing this long refrain the refrain of all my life this immortal and interminable tango Volver ^•

I guess the twinkling of the lights

which in the distance announce my return

return with wrinkled brow the times silvered by the snows of time

to feel that life is but a breath

that twenty years is nothing/only the feverish gaze wandering among the shadows

looks for you and calls you

live with the soul chained to a sweet memory

I cry once again

it was beautiful and long like a memory that comes to the surface without being called long and beautiful like the song of a stranded siren so I said Ardor my heart because indeed I could not finish like that then to this team which was looking for itself I breathed my extra soul because that nobody had taken it away from me I was fat I was slow but I still had that extra soul that everyone always envied me and I gave colors to this team first I qualified it against Australia oh my God to say that it was obliged to play against Australia this match of the redemption of the last chance in order to be able to go to America, Argentina having to play for its place, quits or double, I said Ardor my heart, I said no one, neither the psychologists nor the corrupt justice of this country, nor the Ferlaino Havelange or Nunez will be able to take that away from me. my extra soul nobody could do anything against that as soon as I entered a field I became Pelu again its the Pibe de Oro Diego all the kids around the world they didn't care what I had done off the field they said Diego is back so I said Ardor my heart oh that I don't I didn't miss it I had never missed it but now I needed it and more than ever so I went like a good student to a private clinic in Montevideo run by some kind of wizard I needed a little magic a Chinese doctor named Liu Cheng there I put myself on a diet it was the first step towards my return a draconian diet for eight days in parallel with breathing exercises I took an orange juice for breakfast , a broth and two carrots for lunch a tea snack and a dinner like lunch I had never eaten so little even at Villa Fiorito where we were not rich where Papa Chirito crushed animal bones all day to make us eat well never had I eaten so little I lost 11 kg in one week and 4 the following week it was then when I left this clinic that I met Cerrini he told me that he could fix me up he was a body-building teacher I was very far from this world with him I still forced myself to long bodybuilding sessions several times a week then I associated him with Signorini my physical trainer from Barcelona one of my most faithful friends Omar Sivori my childhood idol said

I saw Maradona's two returns to Sevilla I felt like I was seeing a former player again now I see a player with all his assets

we took refuge in a farm in the heart of the pampas for long weeks we lived completely isolated from the world I liked being so isolated it was the first time that I liked being alone so much I was alone with the greatest ambition of my life to show that the Pibe de Oro was not dead it was worse than doctor Liu Cheng's clinic worse than the bodybuilding sessions with Cerrini it was the most total destitution it was Signorini who had it was all decided there was an old dilapidated TV no hot water and we were listening to the radio during the day he wanted us to leave from the very bottom of Villa Fiorito I believed it and he and Cerrini concocted me a crazy program I worked like never before I had only one goal to fight my last battle to show the world that I was not a bandit and there at the bottom of the pampas when I shaved in the morning at cold water I thought of my father who crushed the bones of animals in Esquina to make us live I was hungry I was hungry again for victories Signorini he knew me well he knew what suited me I should only have listened to him he didn't like Cerrini they were always arguing about what was good for me they didn't agree on the methods Cerrini only saw the appearance the look professional deformation surely he used to prepare people to be beautiful to look Signorini him knew that football was not body-building and that it would take much more than looking good to hold the successive matches that a World Cup demanded for long weeks we led a crazy pace we would run every morning in the pampas I was covered like in winter when the weather was good I had to lose these kilos that were too visible and too bulky I had to go to the end of myself to succeed in this last bet my physique had to be acceptable so that I could let this strength express itself unique who was always in me I drew deep from the bottom of me to offer people to the gente this joy that only I was able to give and the whole country was in turmoil this cure was intense and no one can take away my strength that I got out of it no one could say Diego Maradona is a little big guy who drags himself on the field because the field belonged to me I found the Argentina team my so much loved the one who didn't have me never disappointed the one who stayed in my heart the team was great Redondo Caniggia Batistuta we were scary and I was hungry we arrived in Boston one more port so I said to myself here here I'm going to start from scratch and reclaim the world the Argentinian government was already trying to get me back ah those politicians I hate them if they knew how much I hate them Menem he never held out his hand to me when I was arrested in Buenos Aires Menem was indifferent again who didn't want to see my outstretched hand p no one wanted to see her so when Menem wanted to pick us up I said enough now we are going to win the World Cup and I will bring her back to Buenos Aires but not to the presidential palace I will take her to Ernesto's home Sabato because he too reaches out his hand he is one of our greatest writers and Menem he is indifferent Ernesto Sabato he has nothing to eat here is the truth but obviously Sabato he brings nothing to Menem Me Sabato I read his book El Túnel ^? I don't like the hypocrisy of politicians and the powerful I have spent my life fighting against their injustices so Menem he can go to hell Sabato he will support me when they finish me off but it's a another story so for our match against Greece I felt my strength coming back but I knew I couldn't do it all alone so I helped myself from Caniggia and Redondo a triple one-two in an extraordinarily small space and a goal one goal as we see more extraordinary collective action and my shot in the skylight an intense moment an ecstasy a fabulous happiness that I went to share with the world screaming my revenge at a camera and to the millions of viewers in front of their television I was back and I wanted it to be known I wanted to say that Maradona still deserved the love of the el gente people but I had become slow and instead of thanking God and jumping towards him to thank him I stayed at ground level at level human water where everything is analyzed commented and judged I myself gave myself up to the bacchettoni after we beat Nigeria again who looked like a scarecrow we were very strong we were scaring the powerful said to themselves but this Maradona does not didn't we definitely kill once already didn't he have to come back but in poor shape didn't he have to be harmless now they didn't understand that Maradona could have become the Pibe de Oro again I had become slow but my influence on the game my game science my grip on my team my touch on the ball that no suspension in the world would ever take that away from me i was slower and my shadow took advantage and caught up with me Cerrini was giving me energy concentrates to drink and one of them purchased in the United States where these products are authorized in all sports contained ephedrine that June 30, 1994 will go down as the darkest day of my life Fernando Signorini came to see me in my room while I I was having a siesta Fernando Signorini approached me he shook my shoulder gently he knew that I hated being woken up he just said to me

it's all over they killed us the doping test against Nigeria is positive

i jumped up i realized who i was and where i was i yelled that it was unfair that i killed myself in practice and they couldn't do this to me and suddenly Signorini looked at me he followed me with his eyes he saw me collapsing it's as if the world was collapsing on me I curled up on the bed and I cried like I never had cried with my life Signorini he didn't know what to do he left me crying FIFA invoked recidivism but what recidivism do cocaine and ephedrine have anything to do with me the 1994 World Cup in the States United was the most important step of my career it was about proving that i could come back i was devastated i got caught up in something i didn't understand i had made a million sacrifices for people and on arrival I could only offer them frustration everyone knows that I don't need to dope to play this goal against Greece it's only touch touch it's innate now I see that players take six months only six months to have tested positive for nandrolone which is a steroid so there on the plane ah why do I have to think so much in the air on the plane that brings me back from Boston I say bravo bravo I don't know if they wanted to kill me but if they had wanted to we wouldn't have acted otherwise Caldere the Spanish international tested positive for ephedrine like me during the 1986 World Cup he had only been suspended for one match and only the doctor of his delegation had been severely punished me I had done nothing even FIFA will say so in its report much later on August 24 at an official meeting in Zurich FIFA will say that I was not guilty of knowingly taking doping but my enemies had won and Lennart Johansson the president of the European football federation and Antonio Matarrese the president of the Italian federation charged my ca s however I was not guilty but I was condemned I was alone like Juan Pablo Castel ^• at the moment of the verdict alone facing the modern world I was condemned because I always denied the sphere of reality the only reality that I have never admitted is that of the field where my imagination was queen the reality off the field trapped me because I saw there only a satisfaction of the symbol that I was I evolved between the imagination and symbol without ever worrying about reality always thinking that imagination and symbol would be enough to solve everything I was a god on the pitch but off the pitch I was nothing I thought I was still a god even there i've always been far from these adult games reality as it's called i could never stand injustice but by dint of having invoked it it applied to me maybe- to be well that even now the bacchettoni are wrong maybe well that I am an example the example of what not to s do who said that an example had to be exemplary what was I without football who was Diego Maradona a kid from a slum called Villa Fiorito you know Villa Fiorito let's do a little effort of memory that's where enthusiastic people sing until their lungs burst

tengo miedo del encuentro

con el pasado que vulve

a enfrentarse con mi vida

tengo miedo de las noches

que probladas de recuerdos

encaden mi soñar

pero el viajero que huye

delay o tamprano detiene su andar

y aunque el olvido que todo destroye

haya matado mi vieja illusion

guardo escondida a humble hope

que es toda la fortuna de mi corazon^•

you can see all the joy of its child population all the solidarity of poor people all the simplicity of a game the game of football but if you know it you have seen it in each of my actions and my goals it is there that in levitation with a gesture I erase my shadow Ardor my hardest heart begins normal life Ardor my heart the star Maradona has joined the sky of memories end point for a new beginning and an adult life Ardor my heart but she will always be there who then ask you you should know it now Ardor my heart she will always be there and she will always make fun of the well-meaning in the institutions Ardor my heart you can't help it she will always be there buried but present softened but prodigious but who will you say what is this then it is childhood and its memories childhood and its joys childhood that nothing can uproot Ardor my heart even as an adult I will remain a child Ardor my heart even adult I will remain the child of Vil the Fiorito Ardor my heart period

 

 

 

I felt that the world was splitting: I no longer lived in the present writes Octavio Paz ^? to define the passage from the world of the child to the world of the adult. And the sudden, violent and irremediable change in weather that results from it. This new era marks the end of the extraordinary beliefs that populate childhood, when the world is enchanted, devoured from within by the imagination. Every man lives with this scar and therefore this abyss which constantly threatens to open up.

The world that sees us born is always inferior in authenticity and mystery to the one we imagine. The child is not yet absorbed by the world, but he absorbs it. Realities are virtual as long as he is not inscribed in them. Thus the child's world contains only fragments of adult reality; get up, drink, eat… But playing is of course the key word of childhood. The life of the child rests on the game which will very quickly become, for him, the learning ground of the other. Not the learning ground of adult life as we too often think, but rather that of child life. Because the child is not yet regulated by the addition of seconds, minutes and hours or, in any case, not in the manner of adults. There is no deadline for him. His time is a time from which remorse is absent.

Every man knows this passage from the world of childhood to the world of adulthood. Diego Maradona did not know him. Very early on he realized who he was. At the age of 9, he replied with the seriousness of a minister to journalists who asked him if he had a dream: To tell the truth, I have two: the first is to play in the World Cup, the second in the to win.

Brown curls cascade over a chubby face so absorbed in the task that awaits it, so fully concerned with its favorite game, that it leaves you speechless and never ceases to question: what child can be born an adult? Who had taught this child so poor, born in a South American shantytown, to stand like this, upright and proud, already assuming the whole enterprise that was to elevate him to the skies and then trample him underfoot in two decades?

But something even more curious or paradoxical—if we mean by paradoxical, unexpected—is the difficulty that Diego Maradona will show in leading his personal life. He will always be an adult on a football field, conscious of his worth, accepting all challenges and bearing all responsibilities, but he will always remain a rebellious and inconsistent child in life, when he is far from the game, from his objectives (to play and win the World Cup) and of the burden that falls on him. Maradona's logic and certainties cannot be understood outside the playing field where they no longer have defined functions.

I fix Maradona's realization of being Maradona at the age of 3 when he receives his first ball. With this first toy, he has an identity, and the responsibility for this identity.

I imagined the pain of Maradona as a testimony to a little boy who suddenly fell in love with the game of football when he saw the prodigious arabesques of this Argentinian kid who was almost his age and whom the world already called the Child of 'gold.

Perhaps adult life is that testimony. Because the images of childhood are always there tenacious and exemplary, particular and symptomatic, buried under heaps of obligations which at the same time dream of rediscovering their freshness and spontaneity.

Childhood is this time when everything is built. And maybe even a little more.

^? Small Onions

^? The Golden Child

^? Barbecue

^? The lean

^• Stadium of the Boca Juniors team in Buenos Aires.

^? football of death

^? Contemptuous Spanish slang term for South Americans.

^? O mama, mama, mama

Do you know why my heart beats?

I saw Maradona. I saw Maradona

O mother, I am in love (literally: in her love)

^? The Golden Child

^• Maradona is better than Pelé.

^?

This team bought him/But this man is a little demon/And you'll need more than a hundred people to stop him/Maradona is better than Pelé. They did so much to us to have it/Maradona makes us dream/Bring the title back to this city…/Maradona you are the water that makes us live/You are from Naples/Erase all the shame that surrounds this city/ You cannot fail/For us you are a brother, a father, a mother/Your Argentina is here/We cannot wait/At last we have our revenge…

^? International Football Federation

^? The Falklands are Argentinian

^? In Neapolitan slang, a bacchettono is a moralizer.

^? The powerful Neapolitan mafia

^• Magica: MAradona, Giordano, CAreca

^? A championship title.

^• Bernard Tapie then president of Olympique de Marseille.

^? Son of P...

^• Volver (return) lyrics by Alfredo Le Pera immortalized by Carlos Gardel

^? The tunnel. Editions du Seuil.

^• The hero of Ernesto Sabato's book, The Tunnel.

^•Chorus of Volver:

I'm afraid to find

My past coming back

Measure up to my life.

I'm afraid that long nights

Filled with memories

Chain my reverie.

For the fleeing traveler

Sooner or later stops on the way

And if the oblivion that destroys everything

Killed my dreams of yesteryear

There's hidden in me a humble light

The only fortune that remains in my heart.

^? The Quest for the Present. Stockholm speech. Editions Gallimard.

 

(Two decades ago, I wrote this short text on a footballer, Diego Maradona. Those who think nothing of sport will find two literary references here: the first links this text to Homer and dates from the intrusion of the Ego in the story and the other to Joyce for the monologue that never ceases to question existence.)