This article was originally published on 26 April 2020 as part of an “On This Day” series looking back at significant dates in sporting history
Head rolling around and giggling at onlookers, Diego Maradona did not seem entirely compos mentis as his overweight frame was hauled away by the Buenos Aires drugs squad to be questioned on suspicion of cocaine possession. He was a far cry from the boy who had arrived in Europe nine years before with flowing black hair, cheekbones you could use to slice a lime and the greatest football talent of his generation.
Maradona’s cocaine affliction is said to have been born in Barcelona. It is easy to see why he turned to drugs when you look at how his time there unfolded. He actually made his Nou Camp debut wearing the white-and-blue of Argentina. In his first ever World Cup match in 1982, he ran out in front of an expectant Barcelona crowd – he had just signed for the club in a world-record transfer – and for the first time they would get the chance to see what they had bought. Argentina were beaten 1-0 by Belgium and while Maradona hit the bar with a free-kick, he was kicked from pillar to post. Welcome to Europe, Diego. Get used to this.
Later in the tournament, Argentina returned to Catalonia to face Italy at Espanyol’s home and Maradona met Claudio Gentile, a hard-nosed defender who repeatedly assaulted him throughout the game. “Football is not for ballerinas,” he said after Maradona had been fouled 23 times and it had taken the referee 83 minutes to book Gentile. A few days later, Argentina were out of the World Cup at the hands of Brazil, Maradona sent off in the closing minutes for kicking Batista.
Before his Barcelona career had even begun, the spiral had started. The pressure seemed entirely too much for 21-year-old Maradona. Just six months into his time at Barcelona, he was diagnosed with hepatitis, commonly linked to substance abuse, suggesting he had gone off the rails as quickly as he had arrived.
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Barça brought in Cesar Luis Menotti, his Argentina coach, to get the best out of him, but the man known as ‘El Flaco’ (The Slim One) moved training sessions to the afternoons and evenings, citing “biorhythms”. In fact, it was so Maradona could sleep off his cocaine binges in the morning. The final straw for the Barça board came when Maradona started a full-on brawl at the final whistle of the Copa del Rey final. Athletic Bilbao, bitter rivals of Barça’s, and the team who had shattered Maradona’s ankle, had won and the frustrated Argentinian started launching flying kicks at opponents. King Juan Carlos I was in the stands. The embarrassment saw Maradona sold to Napoli.
There, he was received like a hero with 80,000 filling the stadium for his unveiling, having been purchased for another world-record fee. He was immediately made captain and embraced warmly by the fans, the club and unfortunately the local mafia. Rather than give him a fresh start away from drugs and the humiliation of Spain, he was in the heart of the beast. “They practically brought me drugs on a tray,” Maradona recalls of his seven years in Napoli. But as long as he brought fame, fortune and trophies to Naples, he seemed immune to punishment or sanction.
He would party Sunday to Wednesday, cleanse until a game on Saturday and then start it all again. Drugs testers mysteriously never picked him, or if they did he somehow passed. (“Someone would pee for him,” one club official admitted years later.) His talent was such that not only did he manage to play and not get caught, he was winning. There appears to have been no period during his Napoli spell during which he was not taking cocaine but in that time he won two league titles, a Uefa Cup and of course the 1986 World Cup.
Whether Maradona’s performance four years later, scoring a penalty in the shootout that eliminated Italy, and subsequent media vilification is really what triggered his loss of “protection” from post-match drugs tests or whether it was the fact that he started missing games and training, we will probably never know. But what we do know is that he tested positive for cocaine in March 1991 and was handed a 15-month ban.
But the problems did not stop there, and on 26 April 1991 he was arrested after a federal sting operation on a modest flat in a working-class part of the Argentinian capital and his grins quickly turned to tears as sobriety began to set in and the charges of “distributing drugs free of charge and drug possession” were read. He was prosecuted in Italy and Argentina with a plea bargain that eventually saw him handed a 14-month suspended sentence. Sadly, it was not the end of his tale of woe. It was hardly even the beginning of it.
Maradona has since become a figure of farce mixed with tragedy. Once he asked a journalist how good he thought he could have been if he wasn’t on drugs. If only, Diego. If only.
On This Day in sport
- 23 March (2002): English cricket lost a player of rare and special talent
- 24 March (2012): Crouch really did have a good touch for a big lad
- 25 March (1995): Tyson emerged from jail into boxing’s forgiving embrace
- 26 March (2000): Di Canio’s moment of magic sent Tyler into raptures
- 27 March (1999): A Scholes hat-trick kicked off Keegan’s nightmare reign
- 28 March (1984): Liverpool set a record quadruple that is yet to be matched
- 29 March (1981): The first ever London Marathon got a generation running
- 30 March (2003): Johnson refused to move as England won the Slam
- 31 March (1973): Dazzling robes could not save Ali from defeat
- 1 April (2001): Bartlett’s volley stunned Leicester
- 2 April (2005): Newcastle’s fightback turned into a catfight
- 3 April (2016): Leicester’s unlikely hero popped up with a crucial goal
- 4 April (1998): Wilkinson made his England debut… on the wing
- 5 April (1987): Arsenal’s trophy drought ended with win over Liverpool
- 6 April (2013): McGregor made his UFC debut in spectacular fashion
- 7 April (1968): Clark was killed in a 150mph crash at the age of just 32
- 8 April (1990): Man Utd and Liverpool starred on the first Super Sunday
- 9 April (2017): Sergio Garcia broke his Masters duck
- 10 April (1993): Man Utd invented Fergie Time
- 11 April (2010): Pompey reached their second FA Cup final in three years
- 12 April (2005): One of football’s most iconic pictures was produced
- 13 April (1997): Tiger began a remarkable tale at the Masters
- 14 April (1991): Gazza scored a stunning free-kick as Spurs beat Arsenal
- 15 April (1989): Hillsborough claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool fans
- 16 April (1997): Claridge’s smart volley sealed some rare silverware
- 17 April (2001): O’Leary’s Leeds hit their peak – but it soon went wrong
- 18 April (2008): McCullum’s Indian Premier League century sent cricket into a whole new orbit
- 19 April (2008): Calzaghe beats Hopkins in front of Stallone, Houston and Simon Cowell
- 20 April (2018): Wenger announces he is finally leaving Arsenal
- 21 April (2001): Keane commits one of the worst fouls in Premier League history
- 22 April (2013): Robin van Persie’s fearsome volley made it ’20 times Man United’ – but then it all started to unravel
- 23 April (2013): Chris Gayle broke every record going
- 24 April (2004): Eli Manning’s pushy parent ensured he never played for San Diego, despite them drafting him first
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2UZdUVV
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