Soon before the World Cup—it must have been April ’86—the country was facing problems even more serious than the national team. But that’s the way we Argentines were, and it’s the way we still are. Politics has always meddled in soccer; it has always used soccer to its own ends. And, unfortunately, that’s not going to change. Back then, the president, Raúl Alfonsín, said he wasn’t pleased with how the team was playing, and rumors began to circulate that the government wanted to get rid of the coach, Carlos Bilardo. In fact, Rodolfo O’Reilly, who—along with Osvaldo Otero—worked with the government at the Recreation and Sports Department, called me up to tell me that they were going to fire Bilardo.
It was eleven at night in Italy when the phone rang. “That’s weird,” I thought. They put the call through. The first thing I said was, “I’m sorry, but how did you get this number?”
“The government has everyone’s number—didn’t you know?”
“Is that so? Well, I’ve never even set eyes on you, and you think you can call me at home at eleven at night? Do you even know what time it is here? But I have something more important to say to you . . .”
“I’m so sorry, Diego. What is it you have to say?”
“If you get rid of Bilardo, I’m out the door. So, just to be perfectly clear, you’d be firing two guys instead of one. If he goes, I go.”
And I hung up.
I want to make this clear here and now: I did not stab Bilardo in the back when the government called me about getting rid of him. He, on the other hand, betrayed me almost thirty years later.
In those days, I was on César Luis Menotti’s side, but I did everything for the cause, for the team, because I was sure that we would get somewhere. And the cause had been limping along, truth be told. I wanted to put an end to everything that had been done to hurt the team, and that’s exactly what I did. I had decided to take that team to victory, and that’s exactly what I did. How about that, Alfonsín?! With all the crap he had to deal with, what was he doing worrying about Bilardo? Come on.
I did everything for the cause, for the guys, and even for Bilardo. He wasn’t a bad guy. And it’s without bitterness that I say that since he went to work for the Asociación de Fútbol Argentino (AFA), after the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, he’s been dead to me. And nobody can bring him back to life in my eyes. They told me he wanted to talk to me, but there’s no way. And I mean no way. I meant it when I said it, and I mean it even more today. None of this is overblown. It’s the truth, my truth.
Of course, nothing will make me forget how he went all the way to Barcelona to tell me his vision. But that doesn’t have anything to do with it. And the time has come to tell it exactly as it happened, our experience on the ground and not just Bilardo’s vision.
Carlos didn’t let us train! I am always surprised to hear everyone talk about Bilardo’s tactics. Come on! I mean, one day before the match against Korea we had no idea what our strategy was. We didn’t know if Burruchaga would be on the left side or on the right side, if Sergio Daniel “Checho” Batista would cover midfield or stay on the wing . . .
But—I must admit—it’s also true that Bilardo came for me when nobody seemed to remember me. And I mean nobody.
Everyone was more worried about Daniel Passarella than about Maradona, and he showed up in Lloret de Mar one day during the offseason. It was March ’83, and there was still a chill in the air. But I didn’t feel the cold or the heat. All I cared about was training to start playing again. I had been on the bench for almost three months because of the goddamn hepatitis, which I had caught in December of ’82. We had done special preseason training with Joan Malgosa, a coach for Barça (Barcelona), and Ricardo Próstamo, who had been a teammate of mine at Argentinos Juniors, had kept me company. It wouldn’t be long before—after so many months—I would finally be able to kick a ball around, and I was dying to. I was also anxious because there was talk that the coach, the German Udo Lattek, was on his way out. He had driven us to ground with his workouts, but he never let us near the ball. Rumor had it that César Luis “El Flaco” Menotti would replace him. That was, for me, a blessing. I would finally feel comfortable at Barça. The whole thing was inspiring.
Bilardo showed up out of nowhere with Jorge Cyterszpiler, who was still my representative back then. Night fell and he came straight over from Barajas airport. We talked for a while before dinner, and the next morning the madman asked me for a pair of shorts so we could go jogging together. Almost four miles—the last four in my workout. We jogged, walked, and then jogged again. And we talked. We talked a ton. And I remember exactly what was said:
“I wanted to know how you’re doing.”
“Just fine. I haven’t played for three months, but tomorrow I’m back at the ball, and then there’s no stopping me.”
“Good. I wanted to talk to you about forming part of the national team.”
“Listen, Carlos, my contract says that, in addition to the qualifying rounds, I can play in any match as long as Barcelona doesn’t have a major commitment on the same day. But my only major commitment is to the Argentine jersey.”
Then he started in about the dough. Bilardo was always talking about bread. “Money” is the word he used for it. He asked if I was going to demand any special compensation.
“No, don’t you worry about that . . . You think I have money problems? If I play, it’ll be for the team, to defend the Argentine jersey. I couldn’t care less about the cash.”
I hadn’t played in the ’78 cup. I did play in ’82—but some things had gone wrong, and I was one of them. I was physically exhausted before we even started. But it was not as if that year had been a total disaster. In typical Argentine fashion, when we won it in ’78, everything was roses. And in ’82, because we lost it, we were all in the doghouse. But that’s not fair.
Anyway, I was not at the top of my game. And I wanted a rematch. With all my soul, I wanted one.
In my first interview after returning from the ’82 cup, I said I had not blown it, that I had done the best I could. But I knew perfectly well that I was the one who had lost the most that time. So many expectations, so much publicity, so many guys with sticks up their asses waiting to see me go down. And I remember perfectly well saying, “Come on, guys, come to your senses. In Argentina there are a lot of things much more important than Maradona. I want to get that cup out of my mind and start thinking about the next one, about ’86.” That’s what I said in ’82. And one year later, I was already training to show that I meant it.
Bilardo started telling me his ideas about how I should play and so forth. He told me not to worry about the hepatitis thing. Letanú and Trobbiani, two of his players on the Estudiantes team, had come down with it. At first it was hard for them to get back into the swing of things, but then everything got back on track. And, in terms of the game, he was willing to let me do whatever I wanted. He wanted me to feel free, to play where I saw fit; the others would come together around me. He wanted me upfield; I shouldn’t have to mark another player (like hell I wouldn’t) like Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Hansi Müller on the German team did. He loved West Germany. I remember that he later went to talk to Stielike, who was a sweeper for Madrid. He went to see old man Di Stéfano too. Alfredo’s a great guy. I’ve always loved him. He was a hothead—just like me—and a man ahead of his times. What he told Bilardo back then was that Argentine soccer needed to be flexible and dynamic; everyone had to mark an opponent, not just make their own plays. And he was right, actually.
And then Bilardo said something to me that I will never forget as long as I live. “And one more thing: you’ll be the captain of the team.”
My heart caught fire! If I didn’t drop dead from a heart attack on the spot, I never will. And to this day, whenever someone tells me that I was, that I am—that I still am!—the captain of the national team, I get the same feeling in my chest. It’s just as thrilling as holding your grandson in your arms. You’re the one taking command—it’s all in your hands. There’s nothing greater than being the captain of any team, let alone the national team. You’re the man, no two ways about it.
I had the captain’s armband of the Argentinos Junior team, of Juvenil, and of Boca—I must have collected some two hundred, since whenever I would travel, I would buy one. But what I wanted was to actually be the captain of the national team. I was only twenty-four years old, but I felt I was ready. Passarella had been captain until then, but now it was my turn.
When they make you captain, you’d better know all the players well. I would have people bring me videos to see how different guys played. I would get my brothers and my nephews on the phone and ask them. They helped me a lot: “That guy knows what he’s doing.” “That one should pass the ball more.” It’s funny now, but back then you couldn’t just watch a game on TV. You had to get information wherever you could. And I would look for it everywhere. Especially once I became captain.
As soon as my dream of being the captain of the national team had come true, I made a decision: all the players had to feel that wearing the country’s jersey was the most important thing in the world, no matter how much dough you could make playing for a European club.
That was what I wanted Maradona’s team to be like. That was what I wanted to establish.
It was also really important to me when Bilardo told me I would always be a starter, which is exactly what I said to Javier Mascherano many years later. I should have done the same thing with Messi—though I never told him that (a piece of unfinished business). I accept those who referred to the national team as “Maradona plus ten,” just as I later called it “Mascherano plus ten.” But I never thought I could win a game on my own, because that’s simply not possible. That’s why I thank all my teammates for their sacrifices . . . all of them except Passarella, that is.
But I’m getting way ahead of myself. It was March ’83 and the story was just getting started. And almost two years would go by before I put the Argentine national team’s jersey back on. Incredible, but true. So much would happen in the meantime. As is always the case with me, one year in my life is like three or four in everyone else’s.
I was back on the field one week after that meeting with Bilardo. I had been out with hepatitis for three months. The game against Betis ended in a tie, one to one. But what mattered most was that “El Flaco” Menotti was debuting as the coach. And with El Flaco on board everything was different for everyone. The guys loved him because of how he treated them. I mean, they had had the German coach and Menotti could win you over with his words. Imagine, Guardiola himself went to see El Flaco when he agreed to be the coach. Even today, when those guys get together, the first thing they do is ask about El Flaco.
I really enjoyed playing for that Barcelona team, and I remember great games like the one against Real Madrid at the Bernabéu stadium. We won, two to nothing, and I scored an amazing goal; they still show it on television. I started off from beyond midfield, in a devastating counterattack. The goalie, Augustín, came out of the penalty area. I went past him and there was nothing between me and the goal. I saw that Juan José—a short little defense player with long blond hair and a beard—was coming up from behind. I faked heading straight for the goal, but then I stopped short and waited; when he reached me I pushed the ball left with the outside of my foot, almost right on the goal line. The guy went straight past me and ended up straddling one of the goalposts. Just thinking about it hurts. And then I just flipped the ball into the goal, easy as pie . . . The entire stadium gave me a standing ovation.
Under “El Flaco” Menotti, we finished fourth in the league. I was able to play in the last seven games of the season, and we even won the Copa del Rey, beating Real Madrid under the great don Alfredo Di Stéfano. The idea was to march on to the next tournament.
I thought that nothing as bad as the hepatitis would ever happen to me again. But I was wrong . . . We started out losing, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the fourth game of the season, when Bilbao’s Athletic came to play at Camp Nou stadium. It was a classic matchup against the Basques, and the teams really gave it their all.
It sounds like something out of a novel, but it’s true. It actually happened to me, and it still hurts.
I’ve told the story before and I am happy to tell it again because it involves someone who was crucial at that time and would be again once the World Cup was close at hand and there wasn’t much time left. I am talking about Dr. Rubén Darío Oliva, “the Doc” or “El Loco,” with all due respect. He knows that’s what I call him. And I had to call him then—that’s right, when the Basque player Goikoetxea broke my leg.
It was September 24, 1983. I remember the date as if I had scored a big goal that day or something. How could I ever forget the worst injury of my entire career!? They would really knock you around in Spanish soccer back then! It was a miracle that someone didn’t break a bone every single game. I always tell the story about the kid I went to see in the hospital; he had been run over by a car and he wanted to meet me. When I was leaving his room—in a rush because the match against Bilbao was that day—the kid shouted to me from the hospital bed that I should be careful because they were going to come after me. I remember that shivers ran down my spine—those things freak you out. But, by then, I was used to getting knocked around—why should this game be any different?
The game was going well for us. We were winning, three to nothing, and the German player Schuster was taking care of Goikoetxea. There was some bad blood there because the Basque had injured him before. The stadium was on fire: everyone was backing the German, and Goikoetxea wanted to eat him alive. Since he was marking me, he was right by my side, so I said to him, “Easy does it, Goiko. They’re going to give you a warning and you guys are behind, three nothing . . .”
I swear I was not making fun of him. I really wasn’t. I used to talk to the players on the other team that way, especially the ones who were marking me. Naturally, I always kept an eye on how they were treating me. But that night I didn’t see it coming. If I had, I would have jumped back.
The play has been shown on TV thousands of times and now you can see it online. I went for the ball in the midfield area, slightly downfield. I toe poked the ball to my left in what they now call “ball control,” to spin before taking off—my best move. With a short sprint, I killed the defense.
But as soon as I had brought my left foot down, to spin around before taking off, I felt it. I swear it sounded just like a piece of wood splitting. I can still feel it. The first guy who came up to me, I remember, was Migueli. “Are you all right?” he shouted. “He broke my leg. He broke it,” I answered, crying.
They took me to the hospital straight from Camp Nou, in a pathetic little van—unthinkable today. It wasn’t even an ambulance. And when I got to the room, the first thing I wanted to know—the only thing—was when I would be able to get back on the field, if I was going to be able to get back on the field. Soon “El Flaco” Menotti came to see me. He leaned over me and with that smoker’s voice of his, said, “You’ll get better quick, Diego. And let’s hope that all this pain is good for something. Let’s hope it puts an end to all this violence.” I mean, they really played rough back then.
And when Dr. Rafael González-Adrio, the doctor who was going to operate on me, came in, I said to him, “I want to play again soon, Doc. Do whatever you have to do, but I want to play again soon.”
But for that to happen, I would need the magic hands. “The Doc,” “El Loco.” That’s right, Oliva. He went to Buenos Aires with me. I called him up, because he lived in Milan. But he came right away. In fact, he had done so on more than one occasion, no matter how trivial what I had may have been. He came for a muscle ache, for mild discomfort. So imagine how he acted now. What’s more, if he had made it there that evening, I’m sure they wouldn’t have operated on me. No doubt in my mind. With his bare hands, the guy could take care of a broken bone—no need for surgery.
As I said before, I’m telling this story again because that guy was crucial to my performance at the World Cup. That day, he proposed a wager to Dr. González-Adrio.
“If in fifteen days’ time the X-ray shows that the bone is beginning to heal, I’ll take over the treatment. If not, it’s all yours,” he said. “But of course,” said the Spaniard, who assumed it would be six months before I could put any weight on my leg.
Within fifteen days, I put my ankle in Oliva’s wise hands. He took off the cast, took an X-ray, and told me to put my weight on it.
All the fear comes rushing back as I tell the story.
“Are you crazy?” I said.
But I put my weight on it and it didn’t hurt.
One week later, we went to see González-Adrio, to do some tests. He almost had a heart attack when he saw me walk in on crutches but with no cast. “Would you mind holding these for me, doc,” I asked, handing him my crutches to walk down the stairs.
Oliva won the bet, of course, and I went back to Buenos Aires to recover. In 106 days, I was playing again, against Sevilla. We won, three to nothing, and I scored two goals. “El Flaco” Menotti took me out before the game was over, and I remember getting one of the largest ovations of my career. If you ask me, it was really for Oliva. Thanks to him, my ankle was still my ankle. He actually told me that I played so well partly because my ankle had a larger pivot than most.
Well, it was thanks to his hard work that I could still pivot like that. I was shipshape. That’s not the only thing I managed not to lose—but that comes later, closer to the World Cup. I had to move first . . .
Meanwhile, a whole year had gone by since that first meeting with Bilardo, and I had yet to put on the national team’s jersey. And it would be another year before I did. Not once in ’84. I mean, when I think about it now I can’t believe it. How did I stand it? Not even I know how. Bilardo said he didn’t call us because the foreign clubs wouldn’t let us play exhibition matches. That’s one thing that has changed for the better, right? But if it hadn’t, if no one had stood up to the clubs to make them turn over their players despite all the money at stake, there wouldn’t be any national teams today. They would be league all-star teams and the most powerful leagues, the ones with the most cash, would have the best players. In fact, something like that had occurred to Silvio Berlusconi when he was the big cheese in Milan and all the great players went to AC Milan. But one thing I can say for sure, I would never have agreed to it. I would never have worn a jersey that wasn’t blue and white.
It’s true that I changed jerseys at that time, but only from one club to another. I had reached my limit with Barcelona. My relationship with Josep Lluís Núñez, the president of the club, was awful, and I left on terrible terms. I mean, it came to blows. Even with the players for Athletic Bilbao at the other Copa del Rey final.
So I went to Napoli, where I started another life. I landed in San Paolo stadium in July of ’84, during a really rough spell for the national team. But it was an even rougher spell for me. Financially, I was ruined. As I’ve said before, I had to start all over at that time. Napoli was an opportunity. I was a broken man, and I don’t mean just my ankle. I was penniless, and I started again from scratch . . .
I say it was one of the worst moments for the national team because they were playing a series of exhibition matches—the ones Bilardo didn’t call us for because the clubs wouldn’t let us play—and they weren’t doing well at all. They tied Brazil, lost and tied against Uruguay, lost to Colombia . . . And that’s when the harsh criticism set in. They really laid into the team. I think they were so harsh because they associated Bilardo with Osvaldo Zubeldía. They were biased against Bilardo for having had Zubeldía as his coach, for where he came from, for what had happened, or what they said had happened—who knows?—at the Estudiantes club in La Plata. It was a dispute about style more than anything, but they really went at it. The Menotti camp versus the Bilardo camp, and the other way around—and everything that was behind all that. And we players were caught in the middle.
But soon, in September, when I was beginning to play with Napoli in the tournament, I realized it was not going to be easy, that I was really going to have to give it my all. At that point, the national team stepped up with a great tour in Europe: they beat Switzerland, Belgium, and West Germany. And that day—in Düsseldorf, I think—when it was three to one, with two goals by José Daniel “Bocha” Ponce and one by Jorge “Burru” Burruchaga, plus the shot from midfield by “Bocha” that ended up denting the crossbar. And Bilardo announced publicly once again that I was on the starting lineup. And Beckenbauer—Franz Beckenbauer, that’s right—the coach of the West German national team, who was sitting next to him, butted in, saying, “If you aren’t going to put him in, give him to me.”
At that point, I was as worried about getting Napoli up to speed as I was about my own financial situation. And I was waiting for the moment when I would be able to play with the national team again. The idea that it wouldn’t happen until the qualifying round seemed crazy to me. That was a hundred years away. But anything else would mean going against the rules.
But, you know me. Going against the rules—especially if the rules are unfair—has never been much skin off my back. No skin at all, in fact.
I tried to do my best on the field, leaving no room for doubt that my heart was in it for Napoli. But I wanted to do the same thing for the national team. It was a struggle, but I loved it: I wanted to go for broke no matter what team I was playing for.
I was in constant touch with the guys on the national team. Every time they played, I would send them telegrams, best wishes. I would make statements. I wanted them to know that I was with them, even though I wasn’t on the field.
I wanted them to know that I was their captain.
I remember that around that time I got really ticked off at Juan Carlos “Toto” Lorenzo, a guy who was really beloved in Italy and who had a lot of clout there. They asked him about the choice of captain, why it had been me and not Passarella—boy, they loved to talk about Passarella!—and Toto said you had to think about what being a captain means. The most important thing is to be the coach’s main ally. The captain has to be the one who takes in all the information in the locker room, a guy trusted by his teammates, someone they can count on for big things—the one who would be accountable when push came to shove. Lorenzo said that Passarella—here we go again with Passarella!—was a leader, a caudillo. He remembered once at Wembley Stadium seeing with his own eyes how Passarella had shown Kevin Keegan who was running the team. And he wondered out loud if I, if Maradona, would be ready to take on all that responsibility. You bet your ass I was! It was the only thing I wanted in the whole world. But I had to get out on the field to show it, to show it all.
Meanwhile, I was keeping an eye on the national team from afar. I saw how Bilardo was putting together the team with the group of players in Argentina: Pumpido, Ruggeri, Garré, Gareca, Camino, Brown, Dertycia, Trossero, Pasculli, Rinaldi, Burruchaga, Russo, Ponce, Giusti, Márcico, Islas, Clausen, Bochini. Those were the guys in preseason play, with an eye to the qualifying rounds. At a certain point, I had to join that group, of course, as did “Pato” Fillol and, naturally, Passarella, because the press was hot for him; they were always asking Bilardo about him. Journalists didn’t ask him about me, just him. And the other guys on the team who were playing for foreign clubs would be Valdano, Barbas, Calderón. That’s it. It wasn’t the way it is now, where most play abroad. Not at all. Back then, it was three or four at the most.
I followed it all from afar, from 3 Via Scipione Capece, my new home in the Posillipo section of Naples. I was more and more settled in the city and playing better and better for the Napoli club. In February ’85, we were in the middle of the standings, or the championship, as they called it, but we were undefeated; we were the club that had won more matches than any other team that year. We beat Lazio, four to nothing, I remember, and I scored three of the goals. I had scored eleven so far that season. Just two less than a certain Platini—Michel Platini, that’s right—who was driving me nuts. We were just sixteen points away from finishing the season in fifth place and qualifying for the UEFA. It seemed like the perfect time to start putting on the pressure. I had shown them what I had to give; the time had come to play for the Argentine team too. I wanted to play in three earlier exhibition games; I wanted to be with the guys before the first games that mattered. Bilardo kept saying that I was the only sure starter, but he never called.
So I grabbed the reins.
On Sunday, April 21, after beating Inter Milan, three to one, at San Paolo stadium, I grabbed the mic at the press conference and before anyone asked me any questions, said, “I’ll be leaving for Argentina on Sunday, May 5, after the match against Juve, come what may. Not even President Pertini can stop me since he doesn’t have the authority to keep the planes from flying out of Rome.”
And mayhem broke out.
The next week, on the twenty-eighth, we were playing against Rome at the Olimpico stadium. We tied, one to one, and I vented for a second time after that game: “I want to make myself perfectly clear; I don’t want to leave for my country on bad terms, but I desperately need to play with the national team and starting on May 6 I am 100 percent available to Coach Bilardo. You can understand that now, can’t you?”
But they couldn’t. The Italians didn’t get it at all, least of all Matarrese, Antonio Matarrese, who was the president of the Italian Football Federation (Federcalcio). It’s true that we had a game scheduled against Udinese—a team at risk of being relegated to a lower division—and the other clubs with a stake in that (teams from Avellino, Como, and Ascoli, I think) complained. But I never said I wasn’t coming back! I was willing to play as many games as necessary for Napoli and for the Argentine team. Corrado Ferlaino, the president of the Napoli club, and Rino Marchesi, its coach, weren’t thrilled either. But they were getting to know me. And they understood that when I got an idea in my head, nobody could get it out.
On Sunday, May 5, before the game against Juve, I gave another press conference—I was like a president, giving press conferences every day. But the truth is that I was furious because, the Friday before, the federation had sent a telex to the clubs—Napoli in my case and Fiorentina in Passarella’s case—saying that we were not allowed to leave the country until the season was over. They threatened us with suspension. Passarella pretended to give in, but not me. That’s why I spoke out before the game. “I’m going, whether or not the federation or the club wants me to,” I said. I couldn’t stay away a second longer. And I said a few other things too: I didn’t like them telling us this just a few days before we were scheduled to travel, or the fact that they had let the German players Briegel and Rummenigge travel. I said that they didn’t understand anything about the sport: in Argentina, where you sometimes have to play at high altitudes, you have to get there a few days before the match in order to adjust physically. I said that we players had to have a unified response. If not, these guys in suits would end up running our lives. And that wasn’t fair. Not at all.
La Gazzetta dello Sport went to town: “Maradona Challenges the League,” the headline read. And on the cover of Corriere dello Sport: “Maradona’s Uprising. He’s Getting on the Plane.” You bet I was getting on the plane. No way I wasn’t.
For good measure, after the match, which ended in a tie (one to one), I said a few more words: “I said I’ll be traveling, and I will be. But I wanted to let you know that on Friday I’ll be right back here in order to play against Udinese that Sunday. Then I’ll go back to Argentina, but I’ll be back for the match against Fiorentina . . . I don’t want to hear a word about it from Matarrese or anyone else, for that matter; my club has authorized my trip. I’ll spend the next fifteen days going back and forth, but I have no choice. I have never missed a game and I won’t miss one now. If you like my decision, I’m glad. If you don’t, screw you.”
I had made up my mind. To many, it seemed like madness. To me, it was perfect—a challenge to be enjoyed. This, to me, is what it meant to be captain of the Argentine team.
Thinking back on what I did, I can’t believe it. But I can say that I would do it all over again without changing a thing.
The Aerolíneas Argentinas flight, the one I had taken so many times before, left at ten at night. The match against Juve must have ended just after six in the evening, and I had to drive about a hundred and fifty miles to get from Naples to Fiumicino airport in Rome. We had been promised a police escort to get there quicker, but none was sent. I sat down at the wheel of one of my cars, to face the Sunday traffic. I can’t remember which car we took: it can’t have been the Ferrari because there were too many of us—Jorge Cyterszpiler (my agent); Claudia (my wife at the time); my brother, Lalo, and sister, Lily; and Guillermo Blanco, my press agent—but we went like the wind. I mean, we were flying. I got us there in an hour and a half.
Passarella was waiting at the airport. I got there just after nine, so we had time to talk for a while: “They say that if I don’t make it back for those games, they’re going to suspend me. What those jerks don’t know is that I’m going to make it back to play for them. . . . I’m going to show them once again what Maradona is capable of doing for the Argentine team and also for Napoli.”
I fell fast asleep as soon as I sat down in the plane. And the next morning, I was still dreaming, but daydreams. I landed in Buenos Aires and I saw my dad, don Diego, who since the World Cup in Spain had wanted nothing more than to see me wear the Argentine jersey again. We headed for the house in Villa Devoto—the one we still have, where I spent last Christmas, some thirty years later.
I said a few words right there at the airport; I wanted everyone to hear me: “I’m not the savior. I’m Diego. Bilardo is the savior. In fact, his name is Carlos Salvador Bilardo. I’m here to play like any other player, to give the team everything I’ve got. The game against Juve was brutal, but I am here to play. I promised to come back and I kept my word: here I am.”
By four in the afternoon, I was already at the Centro de Empleados de Comercio in Ezeiza where the national team trained back then. I arrived in a tie. For me, playing for the Argentine team again was like going to a party, and I dressed accordingly: faded jeans, pinstriped shirt, tie the same shade of blue as the Argentine flag, blue wool jacket. Pretty as a picture. “Give me two pairs,” I said, asking my brother Lalo to hand me the cleats I had picked out to train in. I wanted to break them in. As soon as I arrived, I found out that while I was on the plane the Argentine team had lost another exhibition match, this one against Brazil, in Rio.
These were all signs that I had to go out onto that field and carry the team on my back.
I trained that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday alongside the others. And on Thursday, the ninth, we went to Monumental stadium to play against Paraguay. Two years and ten months—almost three years!—later, I put the Argentine jersey back on. I quickly understood that the team needed a lot of work. And it would take time. The goalie was “Pato” Fillol, and the defensive line was Néstor Clausen, Passarella, José Luis Brown, and Oscar Ruggeri. At midfield were Barbitas, “Bocha” Ponce, and Burru. And I was on the offensive line with Oscar Dertycia and Ricardo “El Flaco” Gareca. It was a tie, one to one. I scored the goal at a penalty kick at the end of the first period.
The guys and I really got our focus back, and then at five in the afternoon on the next day I got on a Varig flight for Rome via Rio de Janeiro. On Saturday the eleventh, I was back at Fiumicino, but rather than drive back to Naples, I took another plane and headed to Trieste to play the famous match against Udinese, one of the teams in danger of being relegated to a lower division. We drove the forty miles from Trieste to Udine. I was there in time for dinner, had something to eat, and then went to sleep. And sleep I did! I think I woke up one minute before the game started on Sunday the twelfth. But if any of those knuckleheads in Italy had any lingering doubts, they couldn’t say jack after that game: I scored two goals, one of them an amazing free kick. We tied, two to two. What more could they ask of me? I took the quickest shower of all time and got back in the car to drive those forty miles back to Trieste and get on a plane to Fiumicino and then another to Buenos Aires, where I landed on Monday the thirteenth. I don’t think I was out of the country long enough for the immigration authorities to stamp my passport.
This time the Argentine team’s game was not on a Thursday but on a Tuesday, it was Tuesday the fourteenth, against Chile, once again at Monumental stadium. I didn’t have time to train, but it didn’t matter. This time it was me and Nery Pumpido on offense, Pato at the goal, and the same defensive line as against the Paraguayans. Russo was added at midfield, and upfield it was Pedrito Pasculli instead of Dertycia. But one thing did not change, mister, and that was me scoring yet another goal, the fourth in six days: one against Paraguay, two against Udinese, and this one against Chile. Burru scored, as well, and we won, two to nothing. I remember the lineups, and you can really see how much things changed later on for the cup. Because people tend to lie about it, and they lie a lot . . .
There was no way Passarella and I could have stayed in Buenos Aires, because the next match in the Italian league was against Fiorentina, where he played. The outcome of the game was not important at all, but the Italians wanted to show us who was boss and demanded we come back. On Saturday the eighteenth I landed back in Rome, and since we were playing at San Paolo stadium that time, I went straight home to get some sleep. I slept almost sixteen hours! I got up and went to the stadium to play—and I mean to play hard. I think my personal rivalry with “El Kaiser” Passarella played a part there, because I gave it my all that day, with two assists in goals that the referee ended up disqualifying and a give-and-go play with Bertoni that ended with Caffarelli scoring a goal. That was my last game with Napoli, and they had nothing to complain about, nothing at all. I left them in eighth place, well out of danger of demotion and only ten points behind Verona, which had been the league champion thanks to the Danish player Preben Elkjaer Larsen and the German Hans-Peter Briegel. I scored fourteen goals, just four less than Platini—but I would catch up to that Frenchman soon enough. They saw me off with bouquets of flowers: that’s how grateful they were.
But I had to make another trip, this time to Bogotá, via Frankfurt, to play in a qualifying match with the Argentine team. Between Sunday, May 5, and Monday, May 20, I traveled almost fifty thousand miles. Not bad, huh?
I didn’t mind at all. I just wanted to play with the national team. Even back then, the media made up stories about me: they said I had gotten paid eighty thousand dollars for playing in those two games, the one against Paraguay and the one against Chile. Eighty thousand dollars! Come on! You got it all wrong, guys. All I got was the same travel expenses they give everyone: twenty-five dollars per diem. A fortune, right? I told them back then that not even Frank Sinatra brings in that kind of money.
Anyway, I went first class to Bogotá, along with Passarella. He had gotten a warning in one of the league games and so he got out of one of the trips. But this one we took together. We landed in Colombia at night, and I went to have dinner with the guys. I was totally beat, but I wanted to be there.
The next day, we had our first training session at El Campín stadium, and I wanted to be there too. The team for the qualifying rounds was being put together and its first game was against Venezuela, in San Cristóbal stadium. But we were going to spend the whole week in Colombia and head to Venezuela on Friday. That was great news for me—I had been flying so much—but the arrival in San Cristóbal, after landing at the Cúcuta airport, was awful. First off, we took a bus down those mountain roads. And, second, the crowds: I mean, a guy loves his people, but he doesn’t want to be killed by them. When we got off the bus heading to the Hotel El Tama, somebody kicked me. I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose, but it ended up causing me more trouble than the time Goikoetxea kicked me.
I limped into the hotel and spent the whole night icing my knee. Good thing I didn’t have to share a room, because no one would have put up with me. I finally got to sleep at around five in the morning. The pain would be with me straight through the World Cup. And, of course, it was cause for an argument that, thanks to Dr. Oliva, I ended up winning. But that was later—I’ll tell you just how it went down, as I never have before, soon enough.
I remember that my dad and brothers, along with Cyterszpiler, came to watch the game. I saw them when I got to the stadium, and they told me that they hadn’t been able to find the passes, so they were invited to watch the game from the sidelines. El Turco (my brother Hugo) lost it: “You have no idea the things my brother is going to do today,” he said. And I did some of them, I admit, though it wasn’t easy. The South American qualifying matches are rough, really rough—as I would find out later, as a coach. Europeans don’t have the slightest idea what it’s like to play on South American fields against South American teams. None of the fields are easy because your ankles sink straight in. And Venezuela gave us some trouble. It was Sunday, May 26. “Pato” Fillol was the starting goalie, with Clausen and Garré as fullbacks, Passarella as sweeper, and Trossero a little farther upfield; Bilardo put Russo at midfield, to mark players, along with Ponce and Burru; the forwards were Pedrito Pasculli, Gareca, and me.
We got off to a good start: three minutes in, we were winning, one to nothing, with a goal I made from a free kick. But they tied it up at the nine-minute mark because we were careless. Passarella scored in the second period and then right away I headed it in—imagine that, I headed it in! After a free kick by Burru. But then they scored again right away, and we were worried. I didn’t like it being so close, not one bit, especially since we would then have to go to Bogotá to take on Colombia, which had beaten Peru in the first of the qualifiers.
It was not yet the Colombia of Carlos “El Pibe” Valderrama, but they did have Willington Ortiz and Arnoldo Iguarán, and they made the most of them. And then there was the problem of the altitude. A lot to deal with. The country’s greatness—the Argentine greatness—had to come shining through. By then, being in Bogotá was like playing on the home field, and we could really focus. We had already spent a week there and now we were back. We were settled in at La Fontana hotel—we would be back there later and that would be important before the cup. I had a suite all to myself, no complaints.
My brothers El Turco and Lalo may have been kids, but they knew a ton about soccer. We spent hours and hours together. And since there was a while between games, we had time for barbecues. Of course, my old man was the one at the grill, and my father-in-law, Coco Villafañe, had brought the meat. They may seem small, but things like that mattered; they strengthened the group—a tough group since there were so many would-be leaders.
Some changes were made before the game at El Campín. We had realized some things at the opening match. Ricardo Giusti and Marcelo Trobbiani were placed at midfield: Giusti had done a great job at recovering the ball, and Trobbiani ended up playing upfield near us a lot. It was Sunday, June 2. We won, three to nothing, with two goals by Pedrito and one by Burru. Passarella came up to me at the end of the game and—I’m not sure why—said, in the middle of the field, while we were all celebrating, “Too bad you didn’t score, Diego.”
“I couldn’t care less. All I want is to make it into the cup,” I said.
We didn’t have experience with qualifying rounds, and we wanted to get it over with. The pressure was enormous. Even today, I think of how we wouldn’t have made it to the World Cup if we had lost in Bogotá.
We finally went back to Buenos Aires. From the get-go, we had gotten six out of six points as the visiting team and had scored six goals to boot. I say we “finally” got back, even though, to tell the truth, they didn’t treat us very well in Buenos Aires. It was then that I realized how angry people were at the team. It was incredible, actually: they cursed us out until they were hoarse. It was Sunday the ninth. Of course I hadn’t been there. I had just played in those two exhibition games and I didn’t get what was going on. But I guess people had gone to Monumental stadium to vent their anger. Not at me, but some of the guys (like Trossero, Ricardo “the Gringo” Giusti, and Garré) had a really rough time. It’s true that we won, three to nothing, thanks to two goals in the last four minutes of play—one by Clausen, thanks to a pass from me, and one that I headed in—but we smeared the Venezuelans. Russo had scored the first one, and from that moment on, we had them against the goalposts. They had someone marking me, as always—in this case, I think the guy’s name was Carrero—and that often worked to my advantage; I have always liked to go one-on-one and to make the guys dance around the field. Besides, it left room for my teammates. This was the first game with Jorge Valdano as a starter, and that gave us the option to kick more high balls. And we were on our way, with great standing, to the only thing we cared about: the World Cup.
One week later, there weren’t nearly as many knuckleheads after our performance at Monumental stadium. We got more applause than boos. Once again, it was Colombia that we measured ourselves up against.
We beat them, one to nothing, with a goal by Valdano—a head shot for a change—but if the goal I almost scored had gone in, I think they would have had to give me two points for it. It was one of the sweetest plays I ever made with the national team. I started out three-quarters upfield and gave the ball a little flick, and all Prince could do was watch me go past. Then, as I was tearing my way upfield, I got around two players, Morales and Quiñónes, I think, to come face to face with Soto. He gave me some trouble, but I managed to get around him and keep making my way upfield. Two others came to get me, Porras on the left and Luna on the right. I faked them both out and went straight between them. I veered over to the left as the goalie made his way over to me, and from there, I gave the ball a powerful kick with my left foot. But Gómez blocked it. On the rebound, Pasculli almost scored. We played good, I mean really good. Then Barbas came in and he fit in perfectly.
By this time, my injured knee—all because of a fan—was a question of state in Italy, mainly in Naples. They even sent Dr. Acámpora, who was the team’s doctor, to see how I was doing. After examining me, he said, “We wouldn’t have let you play for Napoli in the condition you’re in.” My answer, to him and to everyone else, couldn’t have been clearer: “I’ve been waiting for the qualifiers and to be captain for two years; I’ve dreamed of this moment. My knee is not going to keep me from enjoying it. If the Italian doctor tells me not to play, I’ll tell him to get on the first plane back to Italy, because I’m playing.”
“The Doc,” Oliva, was not the only one who came to see me. Pierpaolo Marino, the club’s sports director, came as well. Everyone—except for me—was really scared. They examined me one hour before the game, as if I were some kind of exotic bird; the two Italians were there, as was Argentina’s team physician Raúl Madero, “El Ciego” Fernando Signorini—who was my trainer and who knew my body better than anyone—and my brother. The knee looked good, but if it hadn’t, I would have played anyway. The story with my knee was just getting started, and I love how it turned out—I’ll tell you about that soon enough.
The business at hand, though, was the qualifying match. Two games against Peru were coming up, one in Lima and one in Buenos Aires, and they were brutal. I can’t remember ever suffering on the field the way I did during those two games. For different reasons each time. At the first one, because of how Reyna was marking me, which even today the whole world remembers. He followed me all the way to Havana, the bastard! I mean it, he sent me a ball when I was staying there.
I remember that during the away game, I left the field for a minute so the doc could check me out; Reyna stayed right there at the edge of the field, waiting for me, not even playing. Unbelievable.
It was Sunday, June 23, and we lost, one to nothing, with a goal by Oblitas. I mean, as I said, I liked having a guy on defense marking me closely because I could always get rid of him with a quick move, but that guy was out of hand, like Gentile in ’82, who really messed with me. I didn’t say a thing: my number-one weapon against that sort of thing has always—and I mean always—been playing.
In soccer today—some thirty years later—Reyna wouldn’t have lasted forty-five minutes. And that day he played all ninety. I remember, back at the hotel afterward, telling a journalist how bad I felt—and not only because we had lost. If I had to choose one game to show how hard the qualifiers are, it would be that one. That afternoon Juan Barbas was a starter. We concentrated a bit more on the midfield, and Valdano and I were alone upfield. But it didn’t go very well and I started to get worried about what lay ahead. So far, we had done everything well enough. But if something went wrong at the end, it would all go to shit . . .
I swear that a few years back, when we were playing against Peru at Monumental stadium in the qualifiers for South Africa, all those awful images came back to me. I said back then that I had never been so frightened on the field and—wouldn’t you know it?—fate put me in the same situation years later. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the team or myself, but everything—and I mean everything—seemed to be against us: the field was damp and heavy from the rain, and then out of nowhere the Peruvians started playing like Bayern Munich. It’s true that they had really good players, not only Reyna, but also Velásquez, Cueto, Uribe, Oblitas.
That’s when you realize how hard it is to be a coach—you want to get out on the field yourself and kick one in there, but you can’t. And how hard it is to play hurt. I was exhausted, and my goddamn right knee was killing me. I could play well enough, but I was dreaming about kicking the ball in from an angle and there was no way my knee would let me. I couldn’t get the word “playoff” out of my head. “Playoff, playoff . . .” If we lost, we would have to go to the playoffs, and with only ten minutes left, we were behind, two to one.
This was sheer agony!
Camino was in for Clausen that game, and in the first play he kicked Franco Navarro so hard that Navarro was out of the game! Ten minutes in and we were winning, one to nothing, with another goal by Pedrito Pasculli. But then they tied it up and were ahead by the end of the first half. And all the ghosts came back to haunt me.
I felt so powerless I wanted to cry. I kept saying to myself that it was not happening. We were playing so well, easy as pie—and then two goals by them in as many offensive plays. I couldn’t make sense of it.
At halftime, we were all cursing one another out. We all knew that we were losing because of our errors, not because of their strengths. Bilardo didn’t say a thing in the locker room, not a peep about the goals, how they had happened, what our mistakes had been. He yelled at us to get our shit together and get out there to qualify for the World Cup.
Big mistake on his part.
Because we were nuts by the time we hit the field, and it looked like it would end three to one, not two to two. Time was rushing by. I would look up at the scoreboard and say to myself, “What’s going on? Have they sped up the clock?” I remembered the boxer Carlos Monzón looking up at the clock when he was fighting Bennie Briscoe at Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires. But I wasn’t groggy. I couldn’t do everything I wanted on the field because of my knee, which was killing me, but we had to qualify.
I was playing farther downfield to try to get the ball and then move upfield and score, but there was a great play—and it wasn’t by me. It was three on two: Barbadillo, Uribe, and I don’t know who against Trossero and “Pato” Fillol. If Uribe had passed it to Barbadillo, it would have ended three to one—and we would be history. But, faking to one side, Uribe slipped and just nipped the ball. And Pato caught it in the air and we got out of that tight spot.
And now comes the part where we scored.
Passarella finally made a great pass and Gareca just tapped it in, which was just what happened with Palermo in the qualifiers for South Africa a thousand years later. I always say that when Martín tapped it in with his foot, it was like that play by Gareca. Exactly the same. I went wild in the mud that time, just as I did later when I threw myself down on the grass. The same agony and the same release.
Back when we were still on speaking terms, I remember I once said to Bilardo that he should have taken Gareca to the World Cup in Mexico just as I took Palermo to the World Cup in South Africa. You know why? Because Gareca deserved it because of everything he had done for Bilardo before I was around. I mean, let’s admit it, before I hit the scene one of the guys who stood by Bilardo was Gareca. I am talking on an individual level. There were good players, but the one who ended up making the goal was “El Flaco” Gareca. Too bad for me that later, when we played on the team together, he started missing.
But I still remember what I said to Gareca that day in the locker room at Monumental stadium once we had qualified for the cup and were a little—just a little—less anxious: “This is just how it’s going to be until the end at the World Cup, man . . . It’s going to be agony, but we’re going to win it.”
We had taken the first step, but I knew that rough times, really rough times, lay ahead. I also knew we were going to be the world champs. Against all odds.
Once I got an idea in my head, it was hard to get it out. Like when my ankle got broken in Barcelona. I picked up the newspaper the next day and read, “He’ll never play again.” And I went, “Is that so? We’ll just see about that.”
The same thing happened with my knee after getting kicked in Venezuela—an injury that stayed with me through the qualifiers. They didn’t say I was never going to play again—it’s true—but they did say I was going to have to have surgery and that the recovery was going to take I don’t know how long. But I didn’t want to hear any of that, which is why—just like that time in Barcelona—I called Oliva, who was as nuts as he was a great doctor.
And “El Loco” Oliva told me that I wasn’t going to need an operation, which was just what I wanted—even needed—to hear.
What had happened? The popliteal muscle was swollen. I learned the word for it at the time and will never forget it—or the pain—until the day I die. I couldn’t straighten my leg.
So anyway, after that knucklehead kicked me, every single day I was hearing and reading that Maradona had to have surgery. Everyone had an opinion and the opinion was always the same. Even the doctor for the Naples team had pressured me to have surgery. But not “El Loco” Oliva, not him. It was great to prevail over the doctor from the Inter, from Milan, from Rome, from Juve, all the big-shot doctors who said otherwise. Why the hell did they have to meddle!?
The solution came during an exhibition match we pulled together against a team that Krol coached. Oliva infiltrated my knee and it jammed. “It’s going to loosen little by little,” he said. But it was time for the game to start and it was still jammed. The game began and, ten minutes in, I had forgotten all about it. I pivoted to run after the ball and—pop!—my knee burst.
I was lying on the ground; it hurt like a motherfucker. So “El Loco” Oliva came over and said, “Did your knee burst?”
“Yeah, doc, it did . . . It’s killing me!”
“Great! That’s just what I wanted to happen!”
I stared up at him. The guy was even crazier than I thought. I hear him say, “Cover him up,” and then he took out a needle—this huge needle—and he infiltrated my knee in the middle of the field. I was in tremendous pain.
“Now move your knee,” he told me.
And I moved it, no trouble at all. It had unjammed. I kept playing. I think I even scored. We won, two to nothing. I played the whole ninety minutes and when I got to the bench, El Loco says to me, “And what about all those guys who said we had to operate? Where are they now?”
Okay, so my problem was taken care of. Now we had to take care of the rest, all the team’s other troubles.
The team had to connect with the fans. They weren’t into us, not one bit. As I said, it was an unpopular team because of the coach we had and the team he had played for. They were talking a lot of dirt about us and a lot of knuckleheads jumped on that bandwagon.
But we players were the ones who were having a rough time of it; we were taking it from all sides. So I put myself out there. Besides, now that my knee had healed, I was having some magical times on the field, playing for Napoli. In late ’85—I think it was November—I made a dream come true for the whole city: we beat Juve thanks to a goal I scored from a free kick—Tacconi, the keeper, is still looking for the ball. It was an indirect free kick from within the penalty area, above the wall of defensive players. And this was way before the refs started spraying foam to keep the defense players on the wall from moving until the ball was kicked. The only thing on the grass during that match was sawdust! There was a lot of talk of all this not long ago, because of the thirtieth anniversary and because, just like old times, Napoli was causing trouble for Juve. As far as I’m concerned, they can break all standing records and outplay me. If Naples is happy, I’m happy.
I was doing great at Napoli back then, but the Argentine team was struggling. Just to be perfectly clear about how I feel for the national team, I’m going to say again now what I said thirty years ago: if I had been forced to choose between Napoli and the Argentine team, I would have stuck with the Argentine team. It was time to step up.
Maybe that’s why, as the headline of El Gráfico sports magazine said, I felt alone, sad, and worried. I remember that cover all right. It was not long before the World Cup, and Bilardo had come to Naples to see me. He spent the whole time asking me how I was doing physically. I don’t know what he was thinking—that I wasn’t going to keep my word, that I wasn’t going to train? It bugged me. And it bugged me even more when he went to Florence to talk to Passarella about the whole thing, as if the issue weren’t settled. You know what he was afraid of? He was afraid that everything we had agreed on would change suddenly when we had almost reached our goal, which was simply to play in the World Cup. I mean, at times I felt like throwing in the towel. I had had it. I had grown a beard, and everyone said that that was a bad sign. It’s true that I was not looking my best, but my sister, Lily, had told me to try growing a beard. She said it would make me look more masculine. I was a tough guy as long as I had my mother by my side. Because at that time my mother, Tota, had come to Italy to spend a few days with me and I would say to her, “What about you and me heading back to Buenos Aires together, Tota? What do you say?”
Again, it’s not that I was scared, but I was aware that I had a lot on my plate and not everything was going the way I wanted. A bunch of annoying exhibition games were coming up, first against France and then against Napoli—my Napoli—and against the Swiss team Grasshopper. In the locker room after training one day, Eraldo Pecci, a teammate of mine, messed with me, saying I was afraid of making a fool of myself against the French. I didn’t think it was funny, not one bit. I wanted to punch him out!
I also wanted Bilardo to stop messing around and to decide who was on the World Cup team. There were some thirty possible players and he had to choose twenty-two. I’m not saying he had to define the entire roster but cut it down, as a vote of confidence to the ones who would be playing on the team. And to the ones who had put up with all sorts of crap. I had gone through thick and thin with the guys who had played in the qualifiers, and I would have done anything for them, guys like Gareca, Pasculli, Camino, Garré, Burru, “Bocha” Ponce, and even “Pato” Fillol and Valdano, no matter how experienced they were. What I really wanted was for Bilardo to show us some respect as men more than as players. And for him to add more men later, if necessary, but for them to be men. Guys like “Tolo” Gallego, whom I loved, and “Guaso” Domenech, who pulled himself up from under. It was not a cast of phenomenal players, of miracle workers, out there on the field. But these were guys who gave it their all out there, who worked as hard as anyone could. That’s why I said publicly I would like Bilardo to give Ramón Díaz a chance. That’s right, Ramón Díaz. I said so before the ’86 cup and also in ’90. So all that stuff about me deciding who would be on the team—just a crock. I mean, Barbas, who was like a brother to me, was not going to be on the World Cup roster!
The guy who was always on the edge, with one foot in and one foot out, was “El Bocha,” Ricardo Bochini. As everybody knows, it was my dream as a kid to play with him, but that never—or almost never—happened. He rocked it on a tour I was not a part of and then he lost it and quit the team. It was not until the end of ’85 that we met up in some exhibition games against Mexico in Los Angeles. I think he helped the team, no matter how nuts he was at the time. The same with Claudio “Bichi” Borghi. He was just a kid and sometimes he would say—or kick, like in that first exhibition game against France—too much. We didn’t make fools of ourselves the way Pecci said we would, but they beat us, two to nothing. Borghi got thrown out of the game for kicking Luis Fernández, I think. Passarella ended up playing, but it was a miracle that he didn’t get thrown out too, because he elbowed Tigana in the worst way. Three days later we played against Napoli in San Paolo stadium. What can I say? For me, it was really strange to play against my teammates at that stadium, but it was only an exhibition game. That was the first time Bilardo put Passarella in as a sweeper and Ruggeri and Garré in as stoppers—something he wouldn’t do again for a long, long time.
Then we went to Switzerland to play against Grasshopper Club in Zurich. We just barely beat them, one to nothing. I don’t know what those games were for, really. I mean, if we won, it didn’t mean shit, and if we lost, they would say we sucked. I didn’t understand that about Bilardo. And they didn’t understand us either—didn’t understand me—when I told them to give us a little more time. Just a little more time, for God’s sake! We’d show them what we were really made of when we were all together in Mexico.
They were worried about the physical training, for example, but I knew perfectly well how I was training and how I was going to train. They said that the Europeans ran more than us, that they were stronger. But I was sure that in Mexico it was going to be different, really different. I knew we were going to be able to do what we wanted. We forwards, for example, would really stick to marking and not stay put when we lost possession of the ball.
Criticism has always made me stronger. If they said that Maradona was just another player, it egged me on; it didn’t beat me down. But that’s not how it is for everybody. If you believed what they told you, Borghi was no longer so promising, and Pasculli couldn’t score a goal against anyone . . . That’s why I said we were a persecuted team.
In April, Bilardo finally handed in the final list. And he didn’t pay much attention to my suggestions. Gareca didn’t make it, neither did “Pato” or Barbas. At least he called Héctor Enrique, who was a great player. He had only let him play once before, in Toulon, but he had never played with us in the big league, and it came as a surprise. A bunch of the guys wanted to kill Bilardo when he released the list, including Barbas, Trossero . . .
In the end, it was Pumpido, Islas, and Zelada as goalies; Brown, Clausen, Cucciuffo, Garré, Olarticoechea, Passarella, and Ruggeri on defense; Batista, Borghi, Bochini, Burruchaga, Enrique, Giusti, Tapia, and Trobbiani as midfielders; Almirón, Pasculli, and Valdano as forwards. And me as captain!
We did another tour and it did not go well, not at all. They really laid into us when we lost to Norway! Then we scored seven goals against Israel, but that wasn’t enough—it was never enough.
But it was enough for me. I was sure that if they left us players in peace, if they let us train—as a team and individually—the way we wanted to in Mexico, we would be up to the task of winning the World Cup.
I loved that team. I loved it deeply and in a special way. I felt a part of it. I was the captain of an amazing group of guys. I once said that what we needed was luck, but I was wrong. What we needed was hard work . . . And respect. Respect of us, for the players. And a lack of respect—that was one thing I was not willing to put up with.
But the one thing I asked was that they give us, the players—me and everyone else—time. I didn’t want to be the captain of the worst national team of all time, as I said back then. A lot of people let what the journalists were saying get to them. But if they left us, the players, in peace, we would be able to make it happen. I had gotten much stronger in Italy: they had to kick me hard if they wanted to bring me down. I was preparing myself, training hard. But they were aiming the firing squad at us on every side.
It was then, after that goddamn tour, that the government announced they wanted to get rid of Bilardo. It was awful. And I came out to back him up—and I still do today. Some thirty years ago, I did for Bilardo what, after the 2010 World Cup, he failed to do for me.
But at least it was good for something. Because, at that point, there was no more time for words. It was time to get out there and play. And we players were going to give it our all.