In March 1982, after nearly a century and half of hesitation, Argentina decided to reclaim the last of the surviving outposts of British imperialism — the Islands of Falkland in the South Atlantic. A group of Argentinian soldiers surreptitiously entered Port Stanley and pulled down the Union Jack from one of the whaling bays, and in its place raised the sky-blue colors of the Argentinian flag. When the news reached England, the nation was shocked. Already reeling under the throes of economic depression and unemployment, they couldn’t take this act of revolt lightly. In the last orgasm of imperial ecstasy, Prime minister Thatcher dispatched the full British might to hold on to the islands — as though the pride of the country and her reputation depended on securing those remote islands which were home to about five thousand people living in blissful anonymity. For sixty-four bloody days and sixteen hours, the two nations fought, and on the 14th of June 1982 at 9 PM local time, Menendez — the Argentinian general — surrendered arms. Argentina’s brief revolt on the battlefield was over. They had to wait for four more years to meet England again on another field to fight another battle, this time in a crucial quarterfinal football game in the 1986 world cup. And the general, the captain, the genius — who led the Argentinian eleven that day, wasn’t in a mood to surrender, and the English were left defenseless, naked, and thoroughly defeated by the sublime left foot of the mercurial master, and some help from God.
It was coincidentally another June in 1986 (26th to be precise), four years after the Falklands war that the Argentinian team played the quarterfinal with the experienced English side at the treacherous and newly laid turf at the Azteca stadium in Mexico City. The freshly laid grass would rip off the turf each time a player turned or twisted, and in some places, it was so loose that players could hardly break into a sprint. A palpable uneasiness filled the air with unpleasant memories of the Falklands war still fresh and the unhealed scars visible in the player’s movements as they eye-balled each other with suspicion and a tinge of ferocity, The first half was goalless. Both teams played safe, getting to know the turf and the tactics of the opposition. Diego Armando Maradona, the captain of the Argentina team, their star player, the maverick genius prowled around, deftly passing the ball to his teammates, heavily defended at each turn by the English team. The game was slowly but inevitable edging towards a penalty shoot-out. But Maradona had other plans.
Six minutes into the second half of the game, the stocky 1.65 meters tall Maradona leaped into the air and headed (it looked like he headed from the sidelines) a pass to score the first goal of the game. It was an unbelievable moment, the pass came in from nowhere, and Maradona jumped high enough with precision to intercept the ball and nudge it towards the goal. The English expectantly and perhaps confidently, turned towards the referee hoping he would declare the goal invalid because it was clear for those close to the action that the ball had ricocheted off Maradona’s hands — an illegal play in football. The TV camera had also clearly picked up the moment showing Maradona’s hands and not his head that did the job. But TV replays didn’t matter for enforcing rules and outcomes. The man-in-charge on the field — Naseer, however, remained unmoved. He couldn’t have seen Maradona’s hand from where he stood, and mysteriously neither did his assistant on the other side flag anything illegal. The goal was declared valid. If there is one man who knew actually what happened, it was Maradona himself, and there was no way in the world he was going to dispute the referee’s decision in this case. If a goal was declared, so be it — Argentina will gleefully take it. The quarterfinal of a world cup, against a nation with whom they have had an agitated relationship in the recent past — is not the place or the time to show personal grace or unwarranted sportsmanship. When the referee declared the goal, the stadium erupted in joy, and in the clamor and din of that noise, all that the English players could do, with hands-on their hips, was to look at each other in disbelief and hopelessness. “The hand of God” as Maradona would later explain the goal said it all. In those pregnant three words, he was giving voice to Argentina’s euphoria that justice is now done through God’s invisible hand. The entire world nodded in agreement, much to England’s ire.
Six minutes after the controversial and infamous “hand of God” goal, Maradona did something magical on the field to score the second goal, the kind of stuff even geniuses can only produce once in a while. Like Michelangelo’s Sistine painting, or a Beethoven’s fifth, or a Nijinsky’s ballet, the ten-second sprint of Maradona combining incandescent brilliance with the ball and flawless technical maneuver — is a masterpiece in sporting history. Those ten-seconds alone that day can stand as a testimony to Maradona’s genius and a breathtaking mastery of the game. Let’s describe the second goal a little more: Maradona acquires possession of the football around the right sidelines of his half; for less than a fraction of a second, his footholds the ball still, to quickly survey the options. With one fluid and authoritative motion, he turns, sprints and dribbles, effortlessly changing direction and beating five English defenders like an ice skater skirting around hurdles, and the running sixty-four meters to the other end with exactly eleven deft touches on the ball with his left foot (Maradona rarely used his right foot), finally, eluding Peter Shilton — the goalkeeper, with a nonchalant tap of the ball to his right, and gently easing the ball into the goal — all in one uninterrupted motion and a ten-second window of chance and genius. The English players could do nothing but stand and watch the little master rip through their defenses in virtuoso moves. Gary Lineker, the English striker who would later become a good friend of Maradona, would years later, reminisce about those pristine moments and say: “Wow, that was breathtaking. Football can rarely get better than those ten seconds”.
Diego Maradona is one of the greatest players the game of football has ever known. There have been several mercurial strikers, dribbles, and defenders in its illustrious history, but very few players had all the skills of the game collectively incarnate in themselves as Maradona did. He was a complete player mentally, physically, and artistically on the field. Football at its best is a visual and aesthetic treat, and Maradona personified the languid grace and mastery of the game at its best. At his feet, the ball obeyed his commands and it stuck to his feet like a magnet. His game displayed the rare quality of glossy camouflage, appearing to be sleepy and dormant for long stretches of time, before suddenly injecting a sense of urgency with a mesmerizing dribble, a near-impossible pass, or a deft shot with just enough force to run past the defenders. To watch Maradona’s entire body and mind respond with a heightened sense of awareness and instinctive strategy — is pure bliss, and it is the closest one can come to transcendence in football. And thankfully, Maradona gave us many such moments of bliss in his fifteen-year professional career. Football was in his genes, how else can we explain his genius? Born and brought up in a shack in a remote town in Argentina, the young Maradona shared a leaking room with seven brothers and sisters, drinking water out a community tap and virtually no formal training or education of any kind. All he knew was kicking the ball, never once realizing that he was kicking it like nobody else did until he was spotted by a talent scout who watched him play and recruited him for the club Los Cebollitas (The Little Onions), the junior team of Buenos Aires. Maradona never looked back.
It is difficult to write about Maradona without mentioning his drug addiction, and his constant struggle with his inner demons. He was a tortured soul, no doubt at that, and only football, as long as he could play it, gave him the focus and anchor he needed. Like most men of genius, who lived their lives on their terms (often at the cost of their immeasurable talent) Maradona refused to follow the accepted trajectory in sports. Success came fast, and money poured in torrentially. The footballing skills were ever-present, but the energies required to keep the momentum going were dissipated. He got hooked to cocaine in the late eighties, and from then on, he jumped from addiction to another, one relationship to another, with only brief periods of sanity and peace. When I think of Maradona, I am reminded of an incident in the life of Voltaire, the great French philosopher, and writer. In 1742, Voltaire admonished Madame Dumesnil — the actress in his play — for not being able to rise to tragic heights as demanded by the scene. She complained that she has to have the “very devil” in her to perform at that level, to which Voltaire replied with a philosopher’s fury and insight “Yes Madam, you must have the very devil in you to succeed in any of the arts”. Voltaire’s words apply to sports in equal measure, and definitely, Maradona personified the raging forces that move a genius. A primordial force was at work in Maradona’s personality that constantly kept him at the edge of life, and coursed through his actions pushing him into dark spaces so very often. But that is the nature of genius, the psychological dams are sometimes not strong enough to contain the swelling tide of energy and talent.
Diego Maradona died a few days ago at the age of sixty. What he did on the football field during his prime years will remain indelible in sporting memory, and, at the same time, generations to come will wonder and study the man himself, and what drove him to the abyss of addiction and depression. But for me, and millions of sporting lovers worldwide, he will be fondly remembered and celebrated for the magic on the field. There may be other players who may possess the same level of skills as Maradona did, but, it was only in him that all these gifts melted, mixed, and produced a quality of football that would stand resplendent and peerless in our collective memories.
God bless…
yours in mortality,
Bala