In essence, this is a twilight story: An old soccer idol comes to the rescue of a modest team and is almost doomed to relegation. But the reader, who will have taken a look at the headline and the images, already assumes that things are not so simple. They never are when they refer to Diego Armando Maradona. Not even when it comes to Gymnastics and Fencing, the oldest club in America, with a history brimming with legends and a very few trophy case. Perhaps in El Bosque, the place that knots Maradona and Gymnastics, one of those secret nerves that turns Argentina into Argentina is hidden. For the good, for the bad and for the worst.
- “I grew up in a private neighborhood in Buenos Aires. A neighborhood deprived of water, electricity and telephone ”.
As soon as the Peronist Alberto Fernández assumes the presidency of the Republic, on December 10, 2019, he invites Diego Armando Maradona. That photograph suits you. He will be president for a few years, but Maradona will be king forever. At this point there is no one to discuss that. Despite the drugs, the violence with their wives, the illegitimate children, the countless nonsense that have marked their existence ("if I had not done the bad things I did in my life," he says, "Pelé would not be second ”), the man from Villa Fiorito gives off an aura recognizable by any Argentine. If the spirit of this enormous and ineffable country is summed up in what is popular, and this was recognized even by the refined Jorge Luis Borges, Maradona “is” what is popular.
But Maradona does not immediately go to the Casa Rosada. Alberto Fernández has to wait until December 26. That day, Maradona shows up in a jacket, shorts, and white sneakers. The necessary honors are paid to him and the palace is armored with an extraordinary security operation. The president receives him at the bottom of the stairs, as if on a state visit. The Secretary General of the Presidency, Miguel Cuberos, and the lawyer Víctor Stinfale hold him by the arms because Maradona can hardly walk. The Minister of Finance, Martín Guzmán, leaves his office and runs with a shirt for Maradona to sign. Finally, Maradona looks out on the balcony that overlooks the Plaza de Mayo, the famous balcony of Perón and Evita, and shouts: "We returned!". Many anti-Peronists will have their guts churning, but we are talking about Maradona, the "dirty face" of Villa Fiorito, the boy who drifted out of one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area and took the ball to England's goal. You have to accept him as he is.
- "I love Boca, but my heart loves the tripero".
The La Plata Gymnastics and Fencing Club, the oldest in America, was founded on June 3, 1887, just five years after the city of La Plata itself began to be built by a group of officials and merchants, wealthy people and respectful of order. One of them was Ramón Lorenzo Falcón, the most sinister police chief that Buenos Aires had, assassinated in 1909 by an anarchist and reassigned in 2018 with an anarchist bomb at his Recoleta tomb, which gives an idea of his fame.
At first, the institution remained alien to football, a game that at that time British teachers and railwaymen began to import. But soccer quickly became popular. In 1903, Gymnastics and Fencing already had two teams. A quarter of a century later, massive European immigration had taken over the club. They were tough guys, workers, laborers, many of them employed in Berisso's meat-packing plants, which is why they were called triperos. The proletariat of the area generally preferred the blue and white of the Gymnastics to the red and white of the other club in the city, the Students (called pincharratas, although today they are still considered more cheto or elitist), and that is how things turned out. For the triperos, gymnastics is the team of the common people. He who knows how to suffer. The one who doesn't give up.
It goes without saying that triperos and pincharratas get along very, very badly. Students have been five times the league champion of Argentina, four times champion of America and once world champion. Gymnastics won the last amateur league in 1929 and the 1993 Centennial Cup, the only year it was played. The difference in the prize list deepens the theoretical social inequality between one and the other.
"Let us leave the titles, what matters is that we are the most beloved club in La Plata, the most popular, the one that best represents people," says Mariano Berón, a former director, now dedicated to coordinating the tireless fans.
Perhaps Maradona and the Gymnastics were destined to meet. In the triple memory remains a fact that at the time seemed banal. In 1984, when Maradona was leaving Barcelona for Naples, he suddenly appeared at a gymnastics match. The rival was the Tiger. Gymnastics returned that year to the First Division. Maradona still had two years to ascend to heaven during the World Cup in Mexico. The case is that Maradona went to the El Bosque stadium. Nor does he remember why. In gymnastics they did not forget it.
- "The great captain is me."
In August 2019, Diego Armando Maradona is a broken man. He has finished with alcohol and cocaine, but is convalescing from a recent operation on his right knee (they have put an artificial kneecap), he suffers from severe osteoarthritis, he has an old shoulder injury, he has a weak heart and blood pressure from clouds. This is a 58-year-old man who has been on the verge of death at least twice and has thoroughly punished his body. Doctors prescribe absolute rest until October.
Maradona was a genius on the pitch and later became a star on Argentine television, with shows such as La noche del 10 and De zurda . But to date he has developed a mediocre career as a coach. Twelve games and a single victory with Mandiyú (1994), 11 games and two victories with Racing de Avellaneda (1995), elimination in the 2010 World Cup quarter-finals with the Argentine team, no title with Al Wasl from the Emirates ( 2011-2012), failure in the attempt to promote Al Fujairah to the Emirates First Division (2017), two lost promotion finals with the Mexican Sinaloa Golds (2018-2019).
Despite the rest order and the low brightness of his history as a coach, agent Christian Bragarnik offers Maradona's services to several Argentine clubs. The most needy of them is Gymnastics and Fencing, last in the classification, last in the averages, almost evicted after only five days. Maradona opts for gymnastics. The details of your contract will never be released. Certainly, he does not charge the 17 million dollars a year that he was paid in the Emirates, far from it. He receives variable assets, according to the income his presence generates. "Maradona pays for himself," says Mauro Coronato, a former vice president and participant in the negotiations that concluded in his hiring. Something is certain: in three days, the number of members goes from 30,000 to 33,000; sponsors knock on the door; T-shirts with Maradona's name and number 10 sell in the thousands (at almost $ 50); the modest Gymnastics and Fencing of La Plata appears in all the media of the world.
- "I am not afraid that my crown will fall."
Maradona debuts as technical director of Gymnastics and Fencing on Sunday September 15 against one of his former teams, Racing de Avellaneda. It is madness. In the small El Bosque stadium, officially called Juan Carmelo Zerillo (pharmacist and club president a century ago), there is no room for one more fan. It is a construction from 1924, with a modernist air, with sports facilities (semi-Olympic swimming pool, tennis courts, boxing room) and some peculiar stands mounted on a metal structure that can accommodate 25,000 people. When empty, El Bosque, with its garden and wooded exterior, is almost bucolic. September 15, 2019 is a pressure cooker. There are cameras from all over the world. Even the board of the Students, the great rival, feels compelled to send a delegation to pay homage to the idol.
Gymnastics lose, 1-2. But the enthusiasm does not wane. That day, the Gymnastics discovers what it means to deal with Maradona and his court. "A crowd always moves around him", explains the La Plata journalist Facundo Aché, who has been reporting on Gymnastics and Fencing for 28 years. The directive instructs fans: they should not approach him, they should not touch him, they should not bother him. A Maradona costume is made (very successful) inside which, during the matches, Gustavo, a member of the branch (what in Spain would be called “peña”), bears the name of the coach. The Maradona doll performs animation tasks together with the traditional mascot, a wolf (due to the fact that the club lives in El Bosque), but remains in the band opposite the benches: the king should not be disturbed.
Neither this journalist, nor almost anyone else, can approach Maradona. "You have to pass many filters to access it, and then it depends on your mood," admits a manager. The coach does not work every day. In general, your week runs from Wednesday to Sunday. It is his assistant, Sebastián Gallego Méndez, who runs the day-to-day management. When Maradona attends a training, the journalists must leave. "They have only allowed us to see one work session since he arrived at the Gym and we have not had any contact with him," explains Aché. Maradona continues to live in Bella Vista, a group of luxury urbanizations in the northwest of Buenos Aires, and travels 200 kilometers one way and 200 kilometers back to go to El Bosque. It looks like he's finally about to rent a residence in Campos de Roca, a gated community near La Plata.
In December, three months after his arrival, Maradona shows who is in charge. There are elections for the club's presidency and Gabriel Pellegrino, the man who has directed the Gymnastics since 2016, resigns from the reelection: the institution is in a terrible financial situation and the team remains sunk at the bottom of the table. Maradona, however, decides that Pellegrino, the president who hired him, must continue. "If Pellegrino stays, Maradona stays," he says. The fans panic at the possibility of the idol leaving. Pellegrino shows up at the last minute and sweeps away his rivals.
- "The Gendarmerie will have to take me out of here."
Maradona has his personal and political commitments. On January 22, just before the Argentine soccer competition begins after the Christmas-summer break, the limping idol travels to Caracas to greet Nicolás Maduro and express his "political support". "Venezuela is an example of dignity for all," he proclaims.
On his return, the triumphal tour of Maradona continues: on each court that the Gymnastics visits, the king is paid homage with commemorative plaques, ovations and songs. At Marcelo Bielsa, the Newell's Old Boys stadium (where Maradona briefly played in 1993), he is seated on a throne with the band. Also in El Bosque he has a throne with his initials. The glory of the coach does not spread to the team, which is still sunk in the averages table, which adds the results of several seasons and decides who descends.
Gymnastics people do not fall into discouragement. This fan is called La 22 because it had as its spiritual chief Loco Fierro, real name Gustavo Amuchástegui, who died in 1991 by shots from the Rosario police. The madman in the tarot deck is associated with number 22. The 22 has starred telluric events (on April 5, 1992, a goal against Estudiantes was celebrated with such passion that the Observatory of the University of La Plata registered a slight movement seismic), controversial feats (in 2013 he celebrated the ascent by burning a gigantic 100-meter flag stolen from rivals of the Students) and countless street fights. For the Maradona Branch, each game starts early, with a barbecue in a venue in Los Hornos, a popular neighborhood in La Plata, washed down with plenty of alcohol; the streets intersect and city buses divert their route. "We are already warm to El Bosque," says Nano Oliver, branch chief. "Sometimes we do things that we shouldn't do, but they are things that are part of soccer folklore," he apologizes.
In the rest of the games the national anthem is sung: "May the laurels that we knew how to achieve be eternal ...". Take advantage of any occasion to claim Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands. For Oliver, there is no doubt that Gymnastics is a "very nationalist" institution, and that "Maradona likes."
The harmony immune to defeats seems to be broken on February 16, when Gymnastics visits the Giant, the Rosario Central court. As Maradona played for Newell's, Rosario's opponent of Central, the rogue fans are hostile to Maradona. For the first time, instead of tribute, there are whistles and boos. And Gymnastics loses again, 1-0. The king gets mad: "I want to cry, but I don't cry," he declares. “I spoke to my daughters because they are worried, they are afraid of hanging me. I'm not going to hang myself, don't worry. ” He then launched an unexpected challenge to the president of his club, the man who hired him and who won the election two months earlier: “No one gets off the ship, I am the captain and I take them all. That it does not occur to the president of the Gymnastics to kick me out, because before I miss him. I want to renew, I want to be with my boys ”.
But life goes on. The Gymnastics remains sunk, with many probabilities of descending at the end of the season, on May 31. Maradona maintains its glory. The journalist Andrés Burgo, author of The Last Maradona, among other books, makes a pragmatic definition (potentially extendable to the whole of the country) about the symbiosis between Gymnastics and its revered coach: “A dying team and the dying image of Maradona come together : a descending team and a coach who has trouble walking ”.
The perspective from Gymnastics is different. “A great sentimental link has been established between Gymnastics and Maradona; Whatever happens, the fans will always be grateful to him, ”says journalist Facundo Aché.
On the Los Hornos site, a group of trippers, beer can in hand, explains it differently: “We don't care if we lose, we don't care if we go down, don't you realize that having Maradona entered history? "