Diego Armando Maradona has died the way he lived: idolized by the world of football, for whom he was one of the greatest players in history and which forgave him a private life lacking in values, and including drugs, abuse and beatings. This excess in everything he did did not leave anyone indifferent and led him to make so many mistakes that everything he won on the field and which gained him admiration was squandered with unprecedented speed, until he was left unprotected in real life. He was not a model athlete, nor an idol about whom society can feel satisfied. Nor was he exemplary in any positive sense off the field. But in the stadium he was unique, eternal and unrepeatable. The best footballer in history? For many he was, without any argument. Among the best, for sure. Among the top five, clearly. But everyone has their list and, without a doubt, in mine he is behind Messi and Pelé. Probably Cruyff too. Di Stéfano perhaps? He would be the last of this hasty classification.
Although he made a mark on a whole generation of footballers and no-one in Argentina is considered a national idol like Maradona, he did not succeed at Barça. Or at least he didn’t make the difference that was expected when El Pelusa arrived in 1982, played about 60 games in the two seasons he was present, and won two minor titles, a Copa del Rey and a Copa de la Liga. Rather, it was the city that changed him, as he began his relationship with drugs, which would eventually mark his rapid deterioration as an elite athlete and his always-rapid alternation between rehab and relapse, which never left him. His short stay at Barça did not, for example, raise him into the ranks of the players most loved or remembered by the fans. He played with the number 10 on his back, but the owner of this number is, in the heart of the culers, Lionel Messi.
The mark he left would in the end be more universal than his bootprint at Barça and it came with victory in the 1986 World Cup. A title which was worth a biography and which, yes, in this case, has been won by all the greats, but has not arrived for Messi. Maradona was not a club player, nor a team player, perhaps because he did not have time at Barcelona, unlike in Naples, where he spent eight seasons and which was, behind Buenos Aires, his second city. That meant that his mark on the Barça club and his memory is so fleeting. Here Cruyff and Messi ruled; also Ronaldinho and Eto'o. But not Maradona. In the coming days, everyone will be talking about Maradona and I'm afraid the private part of his life will be in the background. It shouldn’t be like that, because athletes today are icons for millions of people. True idols to be imitated by youth, who end up venerating those they want to be like. And Maradona was an exceptional footballer. And beyond the field of play, he habitually lived in hell.