Off Topic Maradona - Moved from the RIP thread

A Wednesday one?

 

Indeed. The one that kept the herd together.

 

For those with an open mind, extract from an article by Guillem Balague of Five Live:

Diego was a rebel. He was a rebel who had power - and not only knew it but was also prepared to use it frequently for any number of good causes or friends who needed his help.

When he was a young superstar with Argentinos, the club would play friendlies in Argentina and abroad and use Diego as the star of the show to get payment. It was the era of the first colour televisions and all the players were desperate to receive their, until then, unpaid win bonuses so they could buy one. They only received their money, though, when the 18-year-old Diego told the Argentinos president that if they weren't paid then he wouldn't play.

He was a pioneer for so many people in this sport and for so many aspects of the game that are now accepted as perfectly normal.

He was the first player to have a full-time agent, the first to have a physical trainer, one of the first players who would stand up and be counted and fight for the rights of the players to get a fair deal.

He was one of the first to fight for the safety of those forced to play in dangerous sweltering weather - of the sort experienced at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He was the first player to be prepared to shout from the rooftops his belief that Fifa was rotten to the core.

And he did it well before FBI investigators began uncovering corruption within football's world governing body. He did it at a time when no-one wanted to rock the boat.

He rebelled because he believed in a sense of natural justice. He believed it was the footballers who should be the stars of the show and not the governing bodies. Throughout his career, he fought for a fairer deal, for more respect for talented players, including himself.

Napoli would prove to be his greatest club triumph but also the scene for his saddest decline. He made Napoli and Napoli made him... and then they broke him. And he broke himself.

In his first season, the club struggled to work with him, unwilling to take on board his obvious talent. They finished eighth. Then they began to understand how important he was to the club, and finished third the following season.

So it might be fair to say that Maradona's peak started after that, in the 1985-86 season, when the team clicked. And then on the back of Argentina's 1986 World Cup triumph, he led Napoli to their first Scudetto. By way of proving it was no fluke, he led them to that season's Coppa Italia as well.

This was in 1987. Trapped in a goldfish bowl of a city where he could not move without being pursued by a mix of fans and paparazzi, he had resorted to taking cocaine in the toilet of his luxury home. He was already addicted, had started to miss training and was now surrounding himself with those sycophants happy to humour him along a dark path towards self-destruction while telling him how great he was and how much fun he was having.

He was already decaying.

He still managed to secure another championship with Napoli in 1989-90. But he was a shadow of the player he had been a few years earlier.

"Just imagine," he told me with more than a small sense of regret, "what I could have been, what I could have achieved if I had been clean."

It is all part of the puzzle that is Maradona and what makes researching my book about him so fascinating.

Who was he really? Against England, he was a streetwise rewriter of rules and then a genius, all within less than 250 seconds. As a footballer and a man, he lived a life that hit the very highest of peaks before descending into the deepest, darkest troughs of despair. He was unable to cope with the god-like status bestowed upon him, yet was seemingly incapable of surviving without it.

He was misunderstood. As a result of being misunderstood, he felt he was unloved. It is impossible to find any other player who represented so many things to so many people, who lived the dream he wanted, the one they wanted too.

But what I will remember most is not the blunt, rude, overbearing character he could undoubtedly be but rather the man who was kind and considerate. I remember the man prepared to ignore a dozen or so Argentina shirts put out for him to sign and instead pick the top of my beloved Biggleswade United, the non-league club where I am chairman, and then ask me if I wanted him to be photographed with him holding it up.

We will not see his like again.

 

I thought that last bit was a joke and was surprised to find that there is a Biggleswade United and that Guillem, who I always enjoyed listening to talking about Spanish football, is indeed the chairman.

 

think this video sums him up in a small way
a magician with a football

 

Ah another flawed genius gone, loved by millions for their sporting greatness, disliked even hated for the off field antics, George Best, Gazza, Hurricane Higgins, Mike Tyson, It’s the Jeckyll and Hyde thing, the good and bad that makes them sporting Gods, Maradona was probably the greatest player of all time, he was never going to die of old age was he?

 

He crammed plenty in them 60 years - a life lived to the full!

 

maradonna is a deity in argentina, argentina was utterly broken in the 80s, and along came the little magician to give the whole country hope, especially against the english, it was even better i suppose
i always wonder about the mindset for these crazy dribble solo goals, i imagine they just go past 1 player, go forward, no pass? carry on past another no pass?

 

we think we do good at the kc
but the south amercians put us to shame

 

He's been laid to rest already in Buenes Aries.
The Premiership have asked the clubs to wear black armbands and hold a minutes applause before this weekends games. Will this be before, during or after taking the knee?

 

Doing it during taking the knee has been ruled out due to copyright action by the Al Jolson Society.

 



 

Few recall that he got sent off in the 1982 world cup for attempting to squash a Brazilian players family jewels.
Great player. But like a lot of top sports stars he had a dark side. But let's remember the good bits. Sublime.

 

This is getting beyond ridiculous.

 

I do remember a thing where he found himself on the right wing and as he was sprinting to get to the ball to stop it going out for a goal kick. How the **** do you do a perfect cross with one leg behind the other? Whilst you're sprinting mind.

I hope you know what I'm talking about, because its difficult to describe.

 

In association football, the rabona is a method of kicking the football whereby the kicking leg is wrapped around the back of the standing leg–effectively with one's legs crossed.

 

Ye well I couldn't do it

 

I can, but not on purpose.