Diego Maradona (1960 - 2020) was an Argentine professional footballer and manager, regarded alongside Pelé as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. [1] A diminutive attacking midfielder of exceptional balance, dribbling and vision, he captained Argentina to victory at the 1986 FIFA World Cup and led Napoli to the only two Italian league titles in the club's history. [2]
Early life and first clubs
Maradona was born on 30 October 1960 in Lanús, in the industrial belt south of Buenos Aires, and grew up in the shanty settlement of Villa Fiorito, the fifth of eight children in a poor family. [1] He was recruited as a boy into Argentinos Juniors, where his ball control in halftime exhibitions drew crowds before he had played a senior match.
He made his first-division debut ten days before his sixteenth birthday and was called up to the national side at sixteen. He moved to Boca Juniors in 1981, winning the Argentine championship in his first season, and in 1982 transferred to Barcelona for a world-record fee. [2] His Spanish years were disrupted by hepatitis and by a severe ankle injury inflicted by a defender in 1983.
Napoli
In 1984 Maradona joined Napoli, again for a world-record transfer, arriving at a club from the poorer Italian south that had never won a national title. Over seven seasons he transformed it, winning Serie A in 1987 and 1990, the Coppa Italia and the UEFA Cup. [4]
He became an object of civic devotion in Naples on a scale rarely matched in club football, and his shirt number 10 was later retired by the club. His time there also coincided with an escalating cocaine addiction, and in 1991 he received a fifteen-month ban after failing a drug test, ending his Napoli career. [1]
The 1986 World Cup
Maradona's international reputation rests above all on the 1986 tournament in Mexico, where he captained Argentina to the title and won the Golden Ball as its best player. [3] In the quarter-final against England, played four years after the Falklands conflict, he scored twice within four minutes.
He also captained Argentina to the final of the 1990 World Cup, where they lost to West Germany. His fourth and final World Cup, in 1994, ended when he was expelled from the tournament after testing positive for ephedrine. [1]
Management, later years and legacy
After retiring as a player in 1997 he coached intermittently, most prominently as manager of the Argentine national team from 2008 to 2010, taking it to the World Cup quarter-finals in South Africa. He later managed clubs in the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and Argentina. [1]
Persistent health problems followed years of addiction, obesity and cardiac disease. He died of a heart attack at Dique Luján, Buenos Aires Province, on 25 November 2020, aged 60, and Argentina declared three days of national mourning. [2]
In 2000 FIFA named him joint Player of the Century with Pelé. His combination of technical brilliance, a turbulent public life and near-religious status in Naples and Argentina has made him one of the most written-about figures in the history of sport. [3]
