Maradona: The Greatest Footballer of All Time
The discussion of who is the greatest footballer of all time rambles on but in Portuguese Pirate’s mind, there’s only one winner. Diego Maradona defied poverty, savage defending and drug abuse to be the very best and could have been even better…
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“It was a little of the arm of Maradona and a little of the hand of God” he later said about his first goal against England in the 1986 World Cup. It is probably the most controversial goal of all time.
The question football fans should be asking isn’t so much: was Diego Maradona the greatest football player who ever lived? But rather: by what distance was he the greatest football player who ever lived? It’s a discussion I have many times with friends, many of whom know a hell of a lot about football. The same old names crop up time and time again as the ones who rival him to that claim of being number one: Pele, Johan Cruyff, George Best, Ferenc Puskas, Eusebio and more recently Zinedine Zidane.
Of those Pele is probably the one who comes closest in my eyes yet remains in many people’s eyes, the best ever. He remains to this day the only player to have won the World Cup on three separate occasions (1958, 1962 and 1970) which speaks volumes about his consistency over a long career. What he did best was attempt to do things on a football field that had never been attempted before: lob the goalkeeper from inside his own half, skip over a moving ball and collect it on the other side of the oncoming defender, score from a bicycle kick. A lot of tricks, moves and dribbles that are commonplace in today’s game were first introduced into football by the Brazilian legend and for that we owe him eternal respect.
But Maradona was different. He was a genius. The ball wasn’t manoeuvred by him so much as it was a part of him, an extension of him. He dribbled whole teams, he led what was essentially a mediocre Argentina team to World Cup glory almost single-handedly. He inspired Napoli to Serie A titles, something they’d never done before or since. He created magic, he did the impossible and he did it all with a swagger.
“Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get next”. Maradona’s career took him to Napoli where he guided them to two Serie A titles, the only ones they’ve ever won.
Like all geniuses he was of course, flawed. More than most. Brushes with the law, connections with the Neapolitan Mafia and a 25 year addiction to cocaine are just some of the “issues” that he had to deal with whilst still playing. Which makes it all the more amazing that he achieved what he did. And if the tricks he performed on a football pitch were enough to suggest this diminutive man was from another planet, then the one he pulled off in April 2004 suggested he might be special in another way. Maradona suffered a severe heart attack as a result of a drug overdose and was actually pronounced dead, only to emulate Jesus Christ himself and come back from the dead.
I’m remembering Maradona’s career right now because I have just finished watching “Maradona by Kusturica” directed by two-time Palme D’Or winner Emir Kusturica. For what it’s worth, I have mixed feelings about this film. Candid interviews with the former Argentina captain show him discussing his hatred of American foreign policy, his adoration of Fidel Castro and all things Cuban, conspiracy theories towards the bigwigs at FIFA and regrets about being too busy living like a superstar and too often high on drugs to watch his two beloved daughters grow up. It shows “El Pibe” dining in his parents’ modest home in Argentina and returning to Naples almost 15 years after captaining them to Serie A glory where he and his family are mobbed to the point where you wonder if the adoring crowds are actually going to swallow him.
In between the interviews involving Maradona and Kusturica there are clips of him doing what can only be described as magic, none more so than his second goal against England in the 1986 World Cup, officially the “goal of the century”.
It’s a good film and I enjoyed watching it but it’s a little disjointed and I’m left wondering about his regrets in life: did he make the right choices as regards the clubs he played for, how was he first introduced to cocaine, what else is important to him other than family, football and his fans?
It’s the last few minutes of the film that really grip me though. He admits to having played under the influence of drugs time and time again and regrets how they detrimentally affected his performances. He stares at the camera: “Just think what a player I could have been if it hadn’t been for the drugs. Just think.” It’s a scary thought.
