And one day it happened. One day the inevitable happened. It is an emotional and national slap. A blow that reverberates in all latitudes. A worldwide impact. A news that marks a hinge in history. The sentence that was written several times but had been dribbled by fate is now part of the sad reality: Diego Armando Maradona died.
The world champion with the Argentine National Team decompensated this Wednesday morning at the house in the San Andrés neighborhood, in the Buenos Aires match of Tigre, where he had lived for a few days after having surgery on his head. On October 30, he had turned 60.
Villa Fiorito was the starting point. And from there, from that postponed corner of the southern area of Greater Buenos Aires, many of the condiments that the combo had with which Maradona lived are explained. A televised life from that first message to the camera in a pasture in which a boy said he dreams of playing for the National Team. A jump into the void without a parachute. A constant roller coaster with steep climbs and steep drops.
Nobody gave Diego the rules of the game. Nobody gave his environment (a concept as naturalized as it is abstract and changing throughout his life) the instruction manual. Nobody had the joystick to be able to handle the destinies of a man who with the same feet that stepped on the mud reached to touch the sky.
Perhaps its greatest coherence has been to be authentic in its contradictions. That of not stopping being Maradona even when not even he could bear it. The one to open his life wide and in that box of surprises to undress much of the Argentine idiosyncrasy. Maradona is the two mirrors: the one in which it is pleasant to look at ourselves and the other, the one that embarrasses us.
Unlike ordinary mortals, Diego could never hide any of the mirrors.
An iconic image of Maradona.
He is the Cebollita who only had a pair of corderoy pants and is the man with the shiny shirts and the collection of luxurious watches. He is the one who makes four goals to a goalkeeper who tries to challenge him and at the same time the coach who tries to chicane the Germans and ends up humiliated. It is the one that is bathed in glory from the Azteca stadium and the one that leaves the hand of a nurse in the United States. He is the one who harangues, the one who shakes, the one who raises, the one who motivates. The one who took a plane from anywhere in the world to come and play with the National Team jersey. The one with the blond streak and the one who parks the Scania truck in a country. He’s the fat guy who spends his time playing golf in Cuba and the skinny guy from La Noche del Diez. The one who returns from death in Punta del Este. He is Claudia’s boyfriend and is also the man accused of gender violence. It is the addict in constant struggle. The one who sings a tango and dances cumbia. The one who stands before FIFA or tells the Pope to sell the Vatican’s gold. The one who was recognizing children as one who tries to patch holes in his life. An icon of ninth neoliberalism and the one who got on a train to come face to face with Bush and be the banner of Latin American progressivism. It’s every tattoo that he has on his skin, Che, Dalma, Gianinna, Fidel, Benja … He’s the man who hugs the World Cup, the one who bitches when the Italians insult our anthem and the one who brings a smile to the heroes of Malvinas with a match worthy of a fiction, a piece of literature, a work of art.
Because if you had to choose only one party, that would be it. Because there was not and there will not be a section of life more Maradona than those four minutes that elapsed between the two goals he scored on June 22, 1986 against the English. The best summary of his life, of his style, of what he was able to create. He painted his masterpiece in the best possible setting. He told the world who Diego Armando Maradona is. The cheater and the magic one, the one who is capable of fooling everyone and pulling out a mischievous hand and the one who immediately surpasses himself with the score of all time.
Cosmic keg. And the ball is not stained. And severed legs. And that they keep sucking it. And the turtle that escapes. And the vase in the Caballito department, the compressed air rifle against the press, the black Ferrari that he discarded because he did not have a stereo, the Neapolitan mafia and a whole city that chooses to live on pause, surrendered to its God. It’s the song, the raw documentaries and the always outdated biographies. The one who picks up the phone and calls when you least expect it and you need it most. The one who played benefit games without anyone knowing. The one who goes from love to hate with Cyterszpiler, with Coppola or with Morla. The one who always goes back to his origins and pays more attention to those who have less.
He’s the slimy grandfather and the unapproachable dad.
He is first of all and above all things the son of Doña Tota and Don Diego.
Y Maradona is in the present despite the fact that those who die have to be written in the past. It is the one that in Dubai rubbed shoulders with sheikhs and millionaire contracts and the one that in Culiacán and with 40 degrees in the shade asked for a stew at home. The one who was admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital. The one who could quit the cocaine. The one who played games at Harvard. He is the one who as a gymnastics coach lived a postponed tribute to Argentine soccer. The one who had led Racing and Mandiyú was not this last Diego with crooked knees, his words stretched out and his emotions gushing out without a filter.
Maradona is also the man who faded away. His body cracked and he began to bring to light so many years of physical punishment, overflows, excesses, kicks, infiltrations, trips, addictions, ups and downs with his weight, walking through the extremes without a safety net .
And the soul faded to the beat of the body. Lately, he no longer wanted to be Maradona and he could no longer be a normal man. Nothing motivated him anymore. The palliative of antidepressants and sleeping pills no longer worked. And the combination with alcohol sped up the tape. Less and less things started his engine: not money, not fame, not work, not friends, not family, not women, not football. He lost his own joystick. And lost the game.
Fiorito cries for him, the initial set design for this film story and a foundational piece for understanding the character. The Cebollitas mourn him where he was encouraged to dream big. Argentinos Juniors cries for him, where it is not only the name of the stadium but the best example of a mold that generates pride. Boca cries for him and all the passion that he joined to a bond that was mutating but retained genuine love. Naples mourns him, his marvelous altar in which with a ball he changed the life of a city forever. Seville, Barcelona and Newell’s also mourn him, which inflates the chest for having sheltered him.
And the National Team cries for him because nobody defended the blue and white colors like him. In short, the whole country and the world mourn him.
Among so many things he did in his life, Maradona did one particularly exotic: he interviewed himself. Diego in the jacket asked the man in the shirt what he regretted. “Of not having enjoyed the girls ‘growth, of having missed the girls’ parties … I regret having made my old woman, my old man, my brothers, those who love me suffer. Not having been able to give 100 percent in football because with cocaine it gave advantages. I did not get an advantage, I gave an advantage “, was answered in a therapy session with 40 rating points.
In that same montage carried out in 2005 in his program “La noche del Diez”, the Diego in a suit suggested to the one in the T-shirt that he leave a few words for when Diego’s day of death arrives. “Uhh, what would I say?” He thinks. And he defines: “Thank you for having played soccer, thank you for having played soccer, because it is the sport that gave me the most joy, the most freedom, it is like touching the sky with my hands. Thanks to the ball. Yes, I would put a tombstone that says: thanks to the ball ”.
JPE
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