WORLD CUP USA ’94 / THE FIRST ROUND : SPOTLIGHT : FALL FELT IN ITALY

Maradona, who starred in Naples, is almost as much a soccer legend in Italy as he is in Argentina.

Front pages of Italian newspapers featured photos of Maradona and headlines like Corriere della Sera, the Milan daily, “Maradona, thrown out of the World Cup.”

In a front-page commentary, “Stardust,” there is little sympathy for the Argentine: “Now take him out of our sight. Basta (enough), please, with Diego Armando Maradona, with his strange ways, his eccentricities, genius and unruliness. . . . And, please, no more stories of the poor street boy who pays the price of the miseries of the Third World. Latin America is full of scugnizzi (street kids) who don’t have a millionth part of the luck and talents that life has given Maradona, and yet they get through life with greater dignity.”

Andrea Carnevale, erstwhile Naples teammate of Maradona, says in La Stampa, “It will be a stupid error by doctors and Diego. Everyone was happy to have seen him back playing in grand style and he was also regaining stature from a human point of view.” He adds hopefully, “The important thing is that it isn’t cocaine.”