Passion for Soccer Brings Fame, Riches, Injury to Maradona

There is no equal to Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona in American sports, no one player so adored by fans of his two home cities, and so reviled by those in enemy cities.

When the Argentines lost to Cameroon last week in Milan’s National Commerce Center, Maradona was booed on every touch of the ball.

On Wednesday, in Argentina’s 2-0 victory over the Soviet Union, the game seemed to come in and around Maradona like a moth to a flame. Even when he doesn’t score, he plays the game at a different level than the rest of them, sees things the others don’t, creates opportunities the others can’t.

Maradona, 29, a 5-foot-5 bantam rooster, didn’t score, but his play was the focal point of much of the Soviet Union’s attention throughout most of the match.

Before Maradona, Naples was no threat to Milan in the Italian League. With him, Naples has gone from 12th the year before he arrived to eighth, to third and this year to first, taking the championship from Milan. The triumph of the working class over the elite.

In the process, attendance in Naples has gone from 20,000 to an average of 75,000 a game.

His passion for the sport is such that it has been suggested he is shortening his life in order to play. He has two pins in his right ankle, the results of a variety of injuries over the years, and he lives with congenital back problems that keep him in daily pain. More than a year ago, doctors prescribed a monthly shot of cortisone, but during the nine-month professional season, Maradona takes cortisone shots daily, 30 times the recommended monthly dosage.

The cortisone causes him to gain weight, and he recently enlisted the help of specialists to lose 15 pounds in order to prepare for the World Cup. All this, while still taking daily cortisone, plus extra medication on game days.

Maradona is burning the candle at both ends, and this very well might be his last appearance in the international spotlight. He is old beyond his years, and he has taken perhaps more punishment than any player in soccer in the last decade.

For his efforts, Maradona is well paid. One of eight children who grew up in a Buenos Aires barrio, his Naples contract pays him $3 million a year, and he reportedly receives an additional $8 million to $10 million more in endorsements. He is distinguished by his size, a stocky body that is consistently in motion on the field.

And there is something else.

“He has the biggest heart of anyone who has ever played the game,” said Federico Baxter, an Argentine journalist working at the World Cup for a Miami paper. “Maradona is the symbol, the champion for our country and for the people of Naples, but he is also the symbol for the average man who conquered the world.”

He has been criticized even in Naples from time to time, such as last November when he chartered a jet and took a group of more than 100 for his marriage to Claudia, with whom he has lived with for the last 10 years. The party lasted long enough for Maradona to miss three games, but he has since been forgiven.

“Maradona does what Maradona wants to do,” said Naples soccer fan Lui Cavilli in a pizzeria before the match Wednesday. “And we let him. We always will accept what he does, even sometimes when we think it not so good when he does these things.

“He brought us life, so we must let him live his.”