JOHANNESBURG - “Oh, so this is where I am going to prepare my team to win the World Cup. It’s beautiful. I like it.”
Diego Maradona, through his interpreter, tells us during an inspection walk about on the University of Pretoria University’s High Performance Centre (HPC) fields ahead of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
“So, you believe you will lead Argentina to World Cup glory as a coach just like you did as a player?” I ask.
“Of course, yes. Why not?” he responds.
It’s now common knowledge that he didn’t add his name alongside those of Franz Beckenbauer and Mario Zagallo who completed the rare double. His failure to win football’s ultimate prize as a coach should not, however, be allowed to take away from the fact that Diego Armando Maradona was the greatest exponent of the beautiful game.
This, after all, is a player who almost single-handedly captured the World Cup at Mexico 86 with a virtuoso performance unlike any other that the game has ever witnessed.
Perhaps understandably, the focal point of his brilliance is in that 2-1 quarter-final defeat of England where he scored a brace of goals. The ‘Hand of God’ and that stunning solo strike which saw him run from his own half and leave almost the entire England team in his wake essentially summed up his life that came to an end earlier this week – a flawed genius.
But there was way much more to Maradona than that showing when he stuck it to the Poms almost in retaliation to his country’s defeat in the Falklands War that had ended just before the tournament in Mexico.
In that very tournament, Maradona dished out brilliant performances against a South Korean team that literally tried to kick him out of the game and destroyed a Belgian outfit that attempted to crowd him into oblivion but failed dismally in the semi-final.
Earlier on he had managed to avoid being shackled by the one-man crowd that was Italy’s Gentile who often seemed to want to swop jerseys with the Argentinian star during the match. Maradona scored Argentina’s goal in that 1-1 draw.
And in the final against West Germany he delivered that fantastic pass to send Jorge Burruchaga en-route to scoring the winning goal. El Diego himself scored in the finale, but the referee incomprehensibly denied him what would have been the cherry on top of a masterful performance at the biggest stage of them all.
He again helped Argentina reach the final in 1990 where the Germans avenged the defeat from four years earlier to leave Maradona tearful. He had reached the quarter-final with his country at Spain 82 and looked to be
back at his best at USA 94 until that nurse in white pulled him by the hand for a drug’s test he failed.
While his performances at the World Cup served to confirm his super stardom, it is what he did when he joined Napoli following a disgraceful exit from Barcelona that sealed Maradona’s standing as football’s greatest exponent ever.
In local football parlance, Napoli were probably the equivalent of Baroka FC when Maradona joined them. The Neapolitans were the nobodies of Italy – often referred to by their fellow countrymen as blacks. But Maradona helped them rise up from being the scum of the country to a proud people. Never in their history had Napoli won the Scudetto – the Italian Serie A. Enter Maradona and all that changed, Napoli not only beating the likes of Milan and Juventus to the title but also going on to achieve the hitherto impossible by capturing the European Cup.
That success earned Maradona some godly status in Naples, so much so that churches sprung up in his honour. He became a deity that many Neapolitans worshipped.
While I didn’t bow to him, meeting him in Pretoria was the ultimate dream come true. He autographed an Argentina jersey for me and even agreed to pose for a picture, El Diego putting his arm round my shoulder as a friend clicked away on my phone. To my horror, there was no picture in the phone when I got home – the fact that I’d seen a flash notwithstanding. And so it meant I had to be content with this one from the walk about on the HPC fields.
IOL Sport