There was a spark in the air as Maradona prepared to redeem his country and take revenge against England. Watching this space alien in an Argentine jersey do the most astounding thing ever done in the history of soccer was like watching a flying saucer burn its way across the sky.
From up near the top of the stadium, you could see some sort of trench, a ditch, and a shining light ripping through, racing like a comet. Far below in the shadows, in the bowl-shaped Azteca stadium, something happened—Maradona did something that usually occurs only up in the heavens. Like a shooting star tearing a hole in the dark sky, Diego rushed by, as proud as a flag bearer leading his army into a critical battle. Then he darted past the English flanks, leaping over legs as he attempted the impossible. And, like a mountain climber, he planted his flag at the peak.
Jorge Valdano, who was right behind him that day, once said that Diego apologized to him for not passing him the ball. Diego said he just didn’t get the chance. Valdano and the other players wondered how he could possibly have been thinking about that during his unforgettable run.
From one of the press boxes in the stadium—I was working as a sports commentator—I shouted that Diego had just made “the greatest play of all time,” and then I added a phrase that would be repeated endlessly, calling Diego “the cosmic kite.” I went on to work in sports journalism for some thirty years, but that broadcast is what everyone remembers: my entire career has been wrapped up in Diego’s still unsurpassed play.
How many plays are possible in the heat of the match? What did Diego, an artist at the game, see on the field? He made a series of intentional mistakes from the time he got the ball until he reached the goalpost. Sandwiched between hundreds of other commentators, I was forced to abandon all the conventions of my trade by the visions of everything he was doing and everything he might have done.
“Genius, genius, genius,” was the modest word I repeated as the fearless player approached the summit, plowing through the furrow he was making on the turf. At what point did Maradona decide to go for the goal? As he moved forward, he kept his eye on the ball, but how many legs, how many square feet of land came into his peripheral vision? He was able to connect with the ball, to stop, to start up again at an angle, to finish up the play from afar. In a thousand different ways, this play was one in a billion.
Courage, intuition, and “a god behind God,” as Jorge Luis Borges would have said, made this a unique play for all times. By the time the English team’s sense of powerlessness and disbelief had passed, Maradona had placed the ball deep inside the net.
“I want to cry,” is what I said, my hand curled into a fist, my body wrapped up in cables, leaning over my desk as Maradona ran off the field to celebrate his feat.
His entire body was shaking as he let out a cry of joy, and his mind went blank, as if a cloud had exploded behind his closed eyes. It’s wasn’t just any goal. Emotions built up over several years poured into the sieve of reason. It was Diego’s feat, the triumph of the one so beloved to soccer fans. It meant that Argentina had made it to the World Cup semifinals.
It was a goal against the English, and hundreds of young men who should have been shouting in joy were absent: their voices had been silenced four years earlier in the cold of the Malvinas (the Falkland Islands). It took place at a rival’s stadium. And it was the most beautiful and the boldest, the most courageous and inventive play that soccer had ever produced.
Thirty years later, the man himself cannot erase its mark. He jumps farther, runs faster, has more endurance than the rest: the universe itself may expand into infinity, but it can’t outrun Maradona. It’s no small feat. You have to take control of the ball on your side of the field, dodge any rival who gets in your way, face the goalie, and then knock the ball into the net. And it has to be at the World Cup.
And, speaking of Borges, in the short story “The Library of Babel” he imagines every possible book, just as that day Diego wrote everything that could ever be written about soccer, the sport he took to a whole new level.
In a single play, he wrote the book on intuition, on boldness and skill, the book on courage, strength, cunning, genius, memory, and everything else found in the soccer library.
When, at the beginning of the match, the players formed two lines, Diego egged on his fellow teammates. They remember how their captain told them exactly what their rivals would do that day. The words he used were anything but formal. They came from the book of the potrero, with all the challenges it holds. With the insolence of a man who doesn’t seem at all worried about the rules of the game even though the survival of the entire group is at stake, he encouraged them to be intrepid, to leap into the void, even if that meant falling to their death. He couldn’t have known at that point that the same mixture of mischief and art he used in his words to his teammates would be what he deployed in the decisive play of the most exciting match in Argentine history. If he had said, “We’ll beat them, no matter what it takes,” then the goal he knocked in with his hand would have made sense. If he had said something about showing what Argentina knew about soccer, there would not have been any need for further explanation: “the goal against the English” would have sufficed. His fellow players cannot remember a single word he said. Or maybe they are just too proud. But they all say that Diego talked their ears off.
I love the way Diego describes that goal and that match. The ’86 World Cup saw the culmination of a genius who understood just what a world championship means to history. And this epic tale tells still more about his greatness. You couldn’t write this myth off as one of life’s mysteries. Maradona was aware of the challenge that lay before him. It was a duel he had foreseen. To be or not to be, with the whole world watching. He still had to fashion the fame that was not yet wholly his own. He readied himself like Rocky Balboa, offering his body in a sacrifice that would be in vain unless he brought the cup home with him. That’s how cruel life is when you’re the runner-up. The close-up of him bolting toward the goal in the match against Italy shows just how far he had come in his aspiration to be the very best. It can be seen in the way he goes past the mark, like a sprinter running the last fifteen feet. It can be seen in the perfect leap to hit the ball in the air, not waiting for it to come down to his foot—in the artistic grace he used to define the play.
Everything is easier when there are no expectations. Few can bear the weight of the hopes of millions, watching with bated breath as the dreaded encounter unfolds. But Diego knew he would be bringing the World Cup home. Rather than the weight of dread, what he carried on his shoulders was the promise of a newly democratic country that needed to show it could now be a champion. That was the real goal, and, if he failed, the only one who would have to give explanations would be Diego himself.
When it came to standing up for others, Diego was always there. He never lost his rebel spirit or turned his back on his past. His class consciousness did not waver, no matter how many castles welcomed him or royalty courted him. He was still, first and foremost, a soccer player, and darkness falls over the potrero as the sun goes down, like a postcard from a dream.
Yet if we listen to his story, we can discover more about what it means to be Maradona. I believe readers will enjoy learning about parts of his life that, until now, have gone untold. Diego in front of the mirror: his story, his life, his teammates, his coaches, as well as adversaries, stadiums, goalies. Finally face-to-face with the judge, the question he seems to ask is, “What else do they want from me?”
It might be hard for Diego to explain what about him, exactly, made his television special, De Zurda, so wildly popular across Latin American during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Telesur was not allowed to rebroadcast the goals or the key plays from the matches, but Maradona’s magic was more than enough for viewers. Thanks to the program’s guest stars and his smiling face and ongoing battles against corruption in the FIFA, Maradona was able to establish a rapport with viewers across the continent—regardless of the many problems he faced.
On that program, up close, it suddenly became clear how hard it is to be Maradona, the man who, though just a few feet away from the world’s best beaches, was not allowed to set foot on them. Despite tremendous demands, he was always cordial to the television crew. Diego’s respect, manners, and generosity won over the few dozen Argentines and Venezuelans on the TV crew. Endlessly riddled by controversy, Diego never lost patience with anyone during the long month that the program lasted. He knew—as he had known when he went out on the field—that this was his team. On the last night of the program’s filming, the whole TV crew—many of whom had met many big stars during years of work behind the cameras—offered Diego a show of their friendship and gratitude, an unforgettable memento of those weeks together.
Diego was always willing to listen to the suggestions of crew members and directors. He would predict the outcome of corner kicks at barbecues and, to the shock of the goalies, the ball would go in exactly as he had called it. For these reasons and so many more, Diego continued to win the affection of everyone fortunate enough to spend time with him.
Because it was there, working at his side, that Diego became something more than the man who walked onto the field with the English at the start of a match like none other, saying, “You know we can’t lose this one—right, guys? We have to give our lives for those who gave their lives over there, you know where. Here it’s eleven against eleven, and we’re going to trample them, got it?” And off he went, a flag in one hand and a whole country behind him.
VÍCTOR HUGO MORALES