WORLD CUP ’94 / 11 DAYS AND COUNTING : Prodigal Son Returns Home : Diego Maradona Has Had a Checkered Past, but Hopes to Relive Glory Days
He is running--darting, really--in his characteristic manner: Head up, chest thrust out, elbows back, thick legs pumping. Oozing arrogance and cunning and verve and utterly willing to do whatever he must.
Other players will come into the frame, cleats first, and slash at his lower legs. He will always be tumbling to the ground. But he will get up and coax a curving left-footed free kick into the far upper corner of the net.
This is the way we see Diego Maradona when we think of him. His is not 33 years old. We recall him in his prime, in the 1986 World Cup when he was at all times the best player on the field. Opposing players confessed they had moments during a game when they lost track of their own duties and simply watched Maradona operate.
No one will care to recall the bloated and out of shape Maradona loitering in the midfield, the Maradona being led away by police after his arrest on drug charges, the insufferable egoist who claims the great Pele is jealous of his skills.
Which picture of Elvis do The King’s fans keep on permanent file in their mind’s eye?
Which Maradona will we see take the field--if at all--when Argentina plays Greece on June 21 in their first World Cup match? Would it have been better for the best player of his generation to have truly quit one of the scores of times he claimed to? Or will Maradona, the most diabolical of players, pull off another of his miracles and in his new sleek incarnation play soccer in such a way that we will want to think of him in this way, the way he is now?
HERO / VILLAIN
In order to be a savior there must be some thing in need of saving.
In this, the Argentinian national soccer team wrote its own perfect script for the return of a heroic Maradona.
The South American giant sputtered and coughed through World Cup qualifying and doomed itself to suffer great shame when it allowed the hated Colombians to beat them in Buenos Aires, 5-0.
Clearly, in the opinion of the Argentine public, the qualification effort was in serious trouble. Argentina’s coach, Alfio Basile, became the convenient monster.
Basile dared to leave Maradona off the roster for a key series of qualifying matches, a decision that should have been easily justified by Maradona’s diminishing fitness and absent effort. Had it been any player other than Maradona the decision would have been debated, as all soccer matters are in Argentina, but it would not have stirred passions.
Basile learned, as he would again and again, that logical presumptions as to the role of the coach are turned on their head when it comes to Maradona. Far from having the right to select his own team, Basile found that he served as coach only at the whim of Maradona, who utterly controlled public opinion.
The rift was formed.
“I wouldn’t play for Basile again if he came begging on his knees,” Maradona said.
There is no record of Basile’s body position when he inquired of Maradona if he would be available to rejoin the team for the home-and-home series against Australia. Maradona was available.
Trapped, Basile had no room to move in order to save face as the entire nation knew he caved in to the demands of Maradona.
Strangely, Maradona’s words regarding Basile never haunted him and the whole ugly affair only enhanced his reputation while confirming the perception of Basile as being not in control of his team .
“Maybe we’re just hotheads,” Basile said as he and Maradona publicly made up, and no one seemed to snicker at the understated, but apt, description.
But Maradona redeemed himself, not that it was necessary to do much of anything but pull on the blue and white Argentina shirt for him to win the fans.
Maradona worked with a personal trainer, reportedly working out in a field frequented by deer and wild boar in a remote province. He reported to camp 25 pounds lighter and with a sincere desire to help the team. He did, setting up Argentina’s goal during the 1-1 tie in the first game at Sydney.
When the team won, 1-0, in the final match at Buenos Aires and qualified for the World Cup final the team was all hugs and kisses and arms outstretched to the heavens in the usual emotive fashion of the Argentines.
They had won and Maradona had played and it was as clear as anything that there was some inexplicable connection. He was a token and emblem of the team and the country and it simply was unthinkable to go to a World Cup final without him.
HOMEWARD BOUND
Maradona began his career as a professional soccer player as a 15 year-old for Argentinos Juniors. For 12 years he played in such a way that made Argentinians proud to be from the country that produced Maradona. He embodied all that was the best in themselves: creativity, fearlessness, resourcefulness and an attitude of superiority.
When Maradona was sold to Barcelona from Boca Juniors for $10 million, Argentians felt they were worth millions, too. When Maradona was transferred to Napoli, Argentinians remembered their strong ties to Italy and thought of him as visiting relatives.
When Maradona captained Argentina’s World Cup team to a victory over West Germany in the 1986 final, the country wept, for through him they had been held aloft as he held the World Cup’s golden trophy.
By the time Maradona came back to play soccer in Argentina, it was because he was not wanted anywhere else. He did not return in triumph but in the night and with a baying pack of critics at his heels. When he came back he burrowed into the country where they would have trouble reaching him.
When Maradona returned to Argentina in the fall of 1993, it was not to one of the 20 huge metropolitan teams in Buenos Aires, but to the provincial town of Rosario and its smallish club, Newell’s Old Boys.
Maradona’s arrival coincided with the festive return of the Virgin of Rosario to her resting place in the cathedral of Rosario. As she was welcomed and venerated as an icon, so, too was Maradona. Signs in the town read, “Thank you, Diego. Welcome to our town. Now it’s your home, too.”
It’s no reach to say that, to the citizens of Rosario, Maradona was perceived as a savior and redeemer. The town rests on the banks of the Parana River, wedged between the vast Pampas on one side and the swampy delta on the other. The single fact that Maradona would snub the richer clubs in Buenos Aires, his hometown, in favor of Rosario, gave the town a boost. Good enough for the great Maradona, good enough for me, people seemed to say, with a renewed civic pride.
Newell’s is not even the largest club in the town. That would be Rosario Central, the blue and yellows, the team Che Guevara followed as he grew up here. That Maradona would select the smaller team is odd enough, but Newell’s is also saddled with an unfortunate nickname, Los Leprosos , the Lepers. Perhaps, Maradona--who has been unwelcome in many countries--had found a metaphorical bond with the Lepers.
Maradona has given many reasons for choosing the team. He has told a story of leaving Seville and returning to his family in Argentina. He moved everyone, including his parents, to a small town in Corrientes province for the summer. There, in the cradling arms of nature, Maradona fished and healed his body and cleared his mind.
He said his hiatus convinced him to rediscover Argentina’s soccer roots, which trace back to Newell’s, one of the country’s oldest clubs. Soccer fans love that story.
Another reason might be that Newell’s wooed the boots off Maradona, paid Seville a $4 million transfer fee and Maradona a $25,000 a month salary. They promised him that the brightness of his stardom would wash over tiny Rosario with a power that would never be felt had he chosen Buenos Aires. He would be like a big whale in a small pond.
All true. 30,000 people showed up to watch Maradona’s first practice. Maradona said he wanted to hug each one. “It’s like starting to live again,” he said.
The club’s finances flickered to life as well. Having averaged a gate of about 10,000 pre-Maradona, the club began to draw three times that, translating into gate receipts of more than a half million dollars per game. The Argentine television network Telefe paid Newell’s $800,000 for the rights to broadcast just the first game in which Maradona played, a meaningless exhibition against a team from Ecuador.
His performance will be added to the Maradona archives and offer proof that whatever else may be thought of him, Maradona was capable of creating moments of transcendence on a soccer field.
On his first touch in the first minute Maradona chested the ball and brought it down to his famous left foot. He flipped a 30-yard pass over his shoulder to a winger trailing on his right. Moments later he was crashing into the goal box letting loose a dangerous header. He scored a rare goal with his right foot. He showed a bicycle kick, a scissor-kick cross and the amasada --the deft drag back move that he executed on England’s Peter Reid in the 1986 World Cup, the move that launched the long run past four defenders and culminated in his beating goalkeeper Peter Shilton.
According to the account of the Newell’s game in the Buenos Aires daily La Razon, Maradona played 90 minutes and had possession of the ball 102 times, made 62 successful passes, had five scoring attempts, took four corners and one free kick. In the 70th minute, the newspaper reported, the Virgin of Rosario turned her face toward Maradona and smiled.
Five months later Maradona left the team in a dispute--the team complained he failed to show up for training sessions, he said he shouldn’t have to.
Maradona abruptly left the team and returned to his villa outside Buenos Aires. When reporters staked out the driveway in front of his home, asking why he left Rosario and Newell’s, Maradona shot six reporters with a pellet rifle.
Public opinion in the country? Anyone who dares criticize Diegito deserves to be shot. Next time with real bullets.
World Cup Player at a Glance
* Name: Diego Armando Maradona
* Born: Oct. 30, 1960, Lanus, Argentina
* Height: 5-6
* Weight: 180 pounds
* Position: Midfielder
* Club: None
* National team debut: Feb. 27, 1977, vs. Hungary
* Caps (international matches): 98
* Goals scored: 31
* Little-known fact: In 1987, he was offered a role in a movie with Kim Basinger.
* Honors: Played in his first professional game at age 15. Was captain of the Argentine youth team that won the world championship in 1979. Won the Argentine league championship at Boca Juniors in 1981. Led Napoli to its first Italian league title in 1987. This will be his fourth World Cup.
