Obviously, I knew the ‘story’ – brilliant, charismatic, star footballer (we’ll ignore the ‘Hand of God’!) emerging from background of poverty… goes on to captain the Argentine World Cup-winning team and also inspire an ailing Italian football team (Napoli) into becoming league champions (twice)… and, of course, in the process of his growing fame and fortune, he also developed a reputation for being a womaniser, for links with the local ‘mafia’ gang and for hard drugs (which, it seems, the club knew about but ridiculously managed to get other players to donate urine samples on his behalf)(the drug-monitoring rules were obviously pretty ‘basic’ in the 1980s!).
There’s absolutely no doubt that Maradona was an incredibly gifted footballer and much of the football footage shows him at his most mesmerising. He joined Naples football club in 1984; although they had fanatical support, they had massively underachieved and had never won a major trophy. Naples itself was an utterly dysfunctional city. Amazingly, Maradona quickly led the club to their first ever title. The man was duly hailed as a hero… there’s a wonderful clip in the film when Napoli won the league and the fans in the city went wild with delight: someone had hung a large banner outside one of cemeteries, saying (in Italian, obviously!): “You Don’t Know What You Missed!”. However, as the magic later faded, he became a virtual prisoner in the city as he lapsed into drug-taking and despair. His ultimate humiliation probably came when Argentina knocked Italy out of the 1990 World Cup (on penalties) in, of all places, Napoli – and, before the match, Maradona had pleaded with the Napoli supporters to back Argentina!
It felt a bit like watching a documentary about George Best – a hugely-gifted footballer who was readily knocked off the rails by the lure of money, sex, drugs and alcohol.
It was rather depressing to watch images of this footballing idol change from lithe athlete to an over-weight, bloated, incoherent has-been (ok, he’s endeavoured to ‘repair’ himself over recent years, but not altogether successfully).
If you have a fascination in football, I feel sure you’ll find this an interesting film (although I think the bloke sitting behind me actually fell asleep!).
Towards the end of the film, someone described Maradona thus:
“Rebel. Cheat. Hero. God.”
I can’t improve on that.
No comments:
Post a Comment