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The media are obsession with Diego Maradona's flaws. Yet countless sports stars (as well as politicians and other high-profile personalities) have had drug addictions and other personal issues. But as long as they accepted the rules, their private lives are covered up./1
In Maradona's case it is necessary to highlight his flaws in order to hide the person he really was - to hide what it was that drove him to be the best./2
Maradona was always open about what motivated him. When explaining, for example, what it meant to him to play for Napoli, he said: “My debut was an away game against Verona, in the north of Italy, on 16 September, 1984. They hammered three in against us.../3
"They greeted us with a flag that made me understand, suddenly, that Napoli’s struggle wasn’t just a football matter: ‘Welcome to Italy’, it said. It was north against south, racism against poverty.../4
“To have won Napoli’s first Scudetto in 60 years was, for me, an incomparable victory. Different from any other, even the 1986 World Cup. We built Napoli from the bottom: it was proper workmanship./5
"The Scudetto belonged to the whole city, and the people began to realise that there was no reason to be afraid: that it’s not the one with the most money who wins but the one who fights the most, who wants it the most."/6
The bond Maradona built with Naples lead him to call on locals to support him when Argentina played Italy there in the 1990 World Cup, with many locals doing just that./7
He told the people of Naples: “You shouldn’t forget that in Italy they do not consider you to be Italian. The country comes and asks for your support for just one day of the year, and for the other 364 they’ll call you Africans.” Argentina went on to win that match./8
This support for the underdog is what led him to make other life choices, like choose to play for working class Boca Juniors over its arch rivals River Plate - nicknamed the Millionaires - despite them offering more money./9
This rebellious spirit is also what he says drove him to score arguably his two most famous goals: the two against England at the 1986 World Cup, just a few years after the Malvinas War between the two nations. /10
Asked recently what his dream present for his 60th birthday would have been, he said: "I dream of being able to score another goal against the English, with the right hand this time!"/11
While the Italian FA, UEFA and FIFA were happy to turn a blind eye to Maradona's private life and use his statue to sell the sport, by 1990 he was deemed too much of a threat. Not long after the World Cup he was banned from playing football for 15 months for drug use./12
While his football would never recover, Maradona continued to be driven by the same sentiments for the rest of his life, whether it was denouncing corruption in the sport, defending progressive causes, or supporting leftist governments in Latin America./13
This, perhaps more than anything else, explains why - even if the debate about who was the greatest footballer will rage forever - Maradona is will surely go down as the most loved footballer (and sports star) in the world./14
There will never be a sports star with their face tattooed on as many people; with a church to them; with so many songs about them; or with the capacity to generate a general strike because people want to see them play, as in Bangladesh when he was sent home from the 1994 WC./15
He will always have his haters who will say he should have lived his life differently. But they, nor anyone else, will ever know what it feels like to live as Maradona, to have come from nothing and become perhaps the most iconic figure in the world, adored by billions./16
Asked about his life, Maradona said recently: "In my career, I have taken some hard knocks, in all senses of the term... But, after all that, when you think about all the wars and all the children who die very young in this world, I say to myself that I am lucky.../17
Asked a similar question back in the 1990s, he simply pleaded: "Let me live my life, I don't want to be an example. But I also won't find peace in death. They used me in life, and they will find the moment to do so when I'm died"/18
And on his death, he said: "If I die, I want to be born again and I want to a football player. I want to be Diego Armando Maradona again. I am a player that has given much joy to the people and for me that is more than enough". /END
