In Argentina, They Are Eating Up Maradona Madness

Going to Argentina without checking out Diego Armando Maradona would be like going to Pisa without visiting the Leaning Tower. He might have a serious design flaw, but, Dios mio , is he one of a kind.

One of the greatest soccer players of all time when he was not sulking or suspended, Maradona is in his eighth--and perhaps last--week as coach of Racing Club, a first-division team in Buenos Aires. But to suggest that he has retired to the sideline would be to grossly underestimate his role in the midfield of Argentine life.

In the last two weeks alone, he has:

--Been fined $3,360 for throwing water at a line judge.

--Sent his lawyer to court to defend him against charges that he wounded three reporters with an air rifle.

--Insulted Pele.

--Publicly mourned the death of Carlos Menem Jr., his friend and the son of Argentina’s president.

--Missed a game and two practices because of a back injury he suffered while playing paddle tennis.

--Gone into seclusion to await a decision by team officials on firing him.

All of this has been big news in Argentina, where the people feel about him as they do about their favorite dessert, dulce de leche . They cannot get enough.

This phenomenon was on display last Saturday at Mar del Plata’s Playa Grande, where Maradona went, he said, to appear in a paddle tennis exhibition with two friends active in the sport and also to embarrass Pan American Games organizers for asking Pele instead of him to appear at the opening ceremony the previous weekend.

Agitated as he might have been, it did not seem to affect his appetite as he sat down to lunch with an entourage of 14, including close friend and former agent Guillermo Coppolo, a hair stylist turned entrepreneur who has been suspected--but never convicted--of various shady activities, including conspiracy to commit murder and supplying cocaine to soccer players.

Although Maradona, 34, has vowed to play again when his 15-month suspension for failing a drug test for ephedrine and other stimulants during last summer’s World Cup expires, he is so fat that he appears as if he would roll like a bowling ball if someone pushed him. Nevertheless, he concluded lunch with a bowl of strawberry ice cream.

While waiting for him to finish, several dozen autograph seekers inched closer and closer to his table until they were almost able to inhale the ice cream. Impatiently, Maradona shooed all of them away, except for one teen-ager with cerebral palsy.

“My dream has become reality,” Michael Lopez said after receiving Maradona’s signature.

Other diners did not appear so awed, but if there had been a meter to gauge their reaction to sitting so close to the large one, it definitely would have leaned in that direction.

“Argentine people love controversy,” said Raul Bottazzi, a native who now lives in Studio City but was here on vacation. “When he’s good, they love him. When he’s bad, they crucify him.”

Even though Maradona had been hounded by the press since the previous Sunday, when his water-throwing and referee-baiting earned him a choice between a $3,360 fine--which he accepted--and a 16-game suspension, he amiably consented to an interview in Buenos Aires, even giving a reporter a private telephone number to call the next week.

His mother-in-law answered once and said to call back the next afternoon. A housekeeper answered once and gave the same instruction. Every other call was greeted by an answering machine.

In Maradona’s defense, it has been another rough week.

After returning to Buenos Aires, he missed Racing Club’s game Sunday, a draw against Huracan, saying that he had hurt his back in a strenuous, two-hour paddle tennis game, although the only thing that he had appeared to do for two hours at one time in Mar del Plata was eat.

He also missed a practice, then arrived 10 minutes before the end of the next one. Not sure they believed his excuse, and not impressed with his 1-2-2 record as coach, team officials reportedly were debating whether to relieve him of his $60,000-a-month job. He earlier lasted only two months as coach of another first-division team, Deportivo Mandiyu, leaving with a 1-11 record.

Meanwhile, judges are hearing testimony in the case against Maradona for shooting at reporters with an air rifle, wounding three, outside his Villa Trujuy country home in February of 1994. If he is found guilty, legal observers here believe he will be given probation and ordered to perform community service, perhaps playing in charity soccer games. But the prosecutor, Alejandro Caride, has asked for a four-year jail sentence.

There were television cameras present during the incident, so a key element in the prosecution’s case is videotape. But Maradona’s lawyer, Hugo Wortman Jofre, called to the witness stand a movie technician, who spoke of the Tom Hanks-JFK scene from “Forrest Gump” as an example of how film can be doctored.

Maradona is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.