The Romance of Diego Armando Maradona
How a kid from the slums of Buenos Aires channelled the great early-19th century Romantic poets and their grandest ideas: the sublime, imagination, and revolution.
Walking through Naples today is like walking through Havana or some other city twenty years after the revolution. Among the dated brickwork and tattered windows lie relics and remnants of the hero that saved the city. Immortalised in colourful, powerful murals that paint pictures of battles gone by. You can learn as much from the fables and stories told through these paintings than in any book. You learn how the man captured the hearts and minds of the people that live in the rundown apartments and flats that, at any other point in history would have been called unfortunate, but due to the brilliance of the man on the wall - for a very brief period - were the luckiest people in the world. His mark on the city is that of a God, a martyr, a legend.
A romantic in every sense of the word, Diego did nothing by half-measures. He scored goals that would make you scream. He performed pieces of skill that would make you laugh. He threaded passes that would make you question everything you knew about physics. He would say things in interviews that would leave some in shock and others applauding passionately at their televisions. It was often difficult to tell whether his footballing talent was intentionally erratic, like a conductor, or whether he lived every minute as if it was his last: performing simply on instinct and adrenaline.
Diego had his demons, but remained true to his soul. Like only a true romantic could, his faith in people remained constant. That belief, paired with a disregard for authority, meant his legend far surpassed the parameters of football. He cared not for status quo or etiquette. If he arrived somewhere, he kicked the door in. With Che Guevarra emblazoned on his right arm and Fidel Castro on his left calf, Diego was a believer in rebellion. As an ally of left-wing Latin leaders, he believed in standing up for the people that cheered him on in the stands: the same that had stood up for him throughout his career.
If there was ever a player to embody how something as absurd as a game where kicking a ball could transform lives around the world, it was Diego. I’d be happy to bet that not many more people in the history of football would be responsible for as many tears as Diego Maradona. Tears of joy, of passion, of triumph, of disappointment and of sadness.
There is a moment in that famous warm-up video - you know the one, before the 1989 UEFA Cup Semi-Final away at Bayern Munich - around 40 seconds in, where the rumblings of the crowd merge into a glorious, rallying cheer. Presumably dumbstruck, the crowd begins to realise it is witness to something so rarely tangible: pure, unadulterated joy. In that moment, Diego Maradona is just as he was 20 years before in the slums of Villa Fiorito: on a pitch, with a ball, entertaining himself.
Diego brought life to a line by perhaps the most famous of Romantic poets, Lord Byron: ‘The great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain.’ Diego Armando Maradona did something not many in human history have ever been able to do: he made people feel.
