What does it feel like meters from the genius (World Soccer Digest, Japan)

 

With thirty-nine years as a professional journalist, I feel privileged. You have to be very lucky so that the first World Cup you have to cover, that of Mexico in 1986, was one that the Argentine team won and with the genius of Diego Maradona. But as if this were not enough, that generation that won that World Cup, and that four years later reached the final of Italy 1990, is the same generation I belong, and when that happens, access to the players is different, it is simpler, added because in those days there was much less press and there was no internet and globalization had not come. Not even if the Argentine team won a World Cup in Qatar 2022 could it be the same as in Mexico because the generational distance with the players is already very wide. But I also believe that Maradona transmitted a special energy.

Today it seems difficult to believe that when the Argentine team came to settle in the concentration of the América club, in Mexico City, not only was it not a candidate to win that World Cup but that Maradona was not on the main list of players designated to be considered as the best of the tournament. Above him were Zico, Michel Platini, and even Karl Heinz Rummenigge. I was one of the few Argentine journalists who from the first day covered that World Cup and it was very easy to talk to the players, who every day, they crossed a corridor from the concentration to the training fields, and then we approached with our recorders and notebooks to talk with them and there was time to greet them and to chat and that was how I got to know him a little more and joke with him, because his mood went from lowest to highest in that tournament.I had to be one of those who surrounded him when he left for a training session when the foreign press had already joined, since the Argentine team advanced in the World Cup, and he began to tire of the persecutions, especially of the TV cameras and the microphones near his mouth, and something that was what he always endured the least: people touching his shoulder from behind to speak to him or to make him turn around. On that occasion, Maradona felt the impulse to jog and escape from everyone by jumping a 1,40 m fence to position himself on the inside of the court. There, many of us realized, for the first time, his tremendous physical condition and how well he was prepared for that World Cup. The week before starting the World Cup in Mexico, I was behind the photographer Gerardo Horowitz, from the sports magazine “El Gráfico” (the most important in South America), when he tried to prepare a production for the cover of the next issue with Maradona and Daniel Passarella -whom later did not play due to an injury-, the two leaders, both with a huge Mexican hat on their heads and posing together, but it was hard, because in those days they did not speak to each other due to an internal confrontation that it had started just months ago.

I was lucky enough to witness that wonderful second goal against England in the quarterfinals at the Azteca stadium, the best goal in the history of the World Cup, and at that moment I injured my leg, because in the impulse of the celebrations, an Argentine colleague fell on me from the seat above, but nothing mattered. I must say that I also celebrated a lot the goal “hand of God”. From my site, all journalists think it was with the head and no one ever imagined that it had been with the hand. We found out later.

But I also had the opportunity to see him champion again at the Azteca stadium against Germany, and to enter (although it was not allowed for journalists) to a chaotic locker room by the amount of people there, and I was able to greet him (although it was impossible to speak through the human fence that surrounded him at the celebrations) and see him react just minutes after receiving the World Cup. Of course, Maradona dedicated the title to the "panqueques" (crêpes), (journalists and critics of the Argentine team who had changed their minds). How can I forget my tears, at age 23, when the referee called the final match to an end? That will last for life.

On the other hand, the Maradona of Italy 1990 was already another. Angrier, infuriated with the Italians because he was playing at his second home, but knowing that he was resisted by a large part of the fans throughout the country due to the north-south rivalry. It was already much more difficult to get closer to him, but in my case, I had established a greater relationship with him during the Copa América in Brazil in 1989. The Argentine team had to play in the first phase in Goiania, a small city near the capital, Brasilia, and a Maradona with a few extra kilos complained to me, resigned, because the president of Napoli, CorradoFerlaino, did not want to transfer him to the Olympique de Marseille from the then powerful businessman Bernard Tapie. “What else can I achieve in Napoli? I’ve already won a Scudetto, a UEFA Cup... he promised me a beatifulhouse to live in, with a park, with total peace of mind, and I need to change the air, but Ferlaino told me that if they sell me, he would have to resign, and I have four more years of contract”, he told me.

Although his moment of fulfillment was when he received the World Cup in Mexico, or of satisfaction when he eliminated Italy in the 1990 semifinal, I think there are specific moments in Maradona’s football life that are related to simple facts. The day I saw him happiest in all those years was when the Argentine team eliminated Brazil in Turin in the round of 16. Diego was physically ill, with an ingrown toenail since the start of the World Cup, and with a swollen knee, but he was able to give the miraculous pass to Claudio Caniggia who defined the match against Claudio Taffarel after Brazil smashed three shots into Sergio Goycochea’sgoal’s sticks, and yet, in that full smile in the hallway to the press conference, with a thin red headband on his head, I managed to congratulate him for two seconds in the hall, although he had taken too long to get to the area. At that time I thought it was because he would have stayed talking for TV, but no: it was because from afar, he saw his friend and Napoli’s teammate, Careca, sad, and ran across the field to hug him.

Later, I had the opportunity to talk with him on some occasions when he returned to live in Argentina in 1991, when he lived through stormy years, but even more so, at the World Cup in the United States, when we joked at Babson College in Boston, place of the Argentine concentration. At that time, he was especially focused on Colombia’s failure in another group, because Argentina was coming off that tough 5-0 defeat to Colombia for qualifying, and in Buenos Aires (although Maradona did not play that match). I never saw him as sad as that day when he was excluded from the World Cup and said "They cut off my legs." I was a few meters away and again, as if that had given me peace of mind, I came to shake his hand, as if saying "Here I am." He handed it back to me silently.

Then it was a little easier for me (although I always liked to take a prudent distance) since I wrote a book about him, Maradona, rebel with a cause (1996), which he read and not only liked, but the ten days after the appearance of my book, he gave an interview to the newspaper "Clarín", the newspaper with the largest circulation in Argentina, whose title was "I am a rebel with a cause", clearly influenced by the book, which I know he liked. The publisher needed reassurance about the use, on the cover of the book, of the word "Maradona", for a matter of rights. I decided to call him at home (there was no cell phone), and when I started to leave a message on the answering machine and said my name, he took the phone, and said “Dude, don’t worry, you’re a friend of PabloLlonto and you will never have a problem with me for that”. I wanted to insist because there was nothing signed but I realized that he had no interest on that formalities. His word was at stake and that was enough. So it was. I never had a minimum claim in 34 years.

My last great memory happened in Brazil 2014. He made daily, in the Radio and TV center, a program for the Latin American channel “Telesur” with the renowned journalist Víctor Hugo Morales -the author of the most famous radio story of his goal against England in 1986- and I went to talk to Morales, who was a columnist for the same newspaper as me, "Jornada." I remember the crowd around the studio. The producer of the program let me in when it was over (it was 12 o’clock at night) and when Morales and Maradona took their microphones off, I was arriving at the table and Morales said to Maradona “Look who’s here”, and Maradona hugged me with a joy that I will never forget and it is the one that I take with me forever.

When asked if Lionel Messi can ever be like Maradona, I tend to resist that kind of comparison when it comes to different times, technologies, physical preparations, rivals, partners and contexts, and even different social origins and different lives. Messi never played in an Argentine league and he lacks, then, that "heat" of the Argentine fan, although he was able to overcome many prejudices and I wonder what would have happened if in 2014 he had won the World Cup at the Maracana, with the rivalry that exists with Brazil. Messi is more effective, without a doubt, but aesthetically, like Maradona there was not. The first thing that comes out of my heart is to say "Thank you so much, Diego."