"Maradona told my daughter ..."

Benjamin Sire is a composer and journalist.

He was also briefly an executive in professional football, within FC Nantes.

Everything will be said, all superlatives will be used, all witnesses will be called, all exploits will be screened by experts, all the crispest anecdotes will be told in the tone of confidence, his whole career will be analyzed with blows of emphatic adjectives ... The hand of God and the slalom of the quarter-final of the 1986 World will parade in a loop for a few days and then ... And then nothing.

The lid of Diego Armando Maradona's coffin will close on his legend and only angels will still be able to touch the greatest genius in the history of football.

Everything will be said, yes, in vain.

Like always.

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So why add a few lines to El Pibe de Oro's litany of obituaries?

Yes why?

Because in the amazement of this announcement that froze me while I was writing another article, I gave a weird little cry.

That of unbelievers contemplating the impossible.

A sufficiently baroque cry and so unheard of in this house that my twelve-year-old daughter rushed into the living room, dying of worry, to come and save me.

Save me from what?

Of the inevitable.

Wasted effort.

Not that much, since for the first time I am using the "I" in these columns.

For the first time I envision the intimate one there by the grace of the meeting between a small blonde of 12 years and a child who died at 60 ...

- What's going on daddy ???

- Maradona is dead !!!

- But who is this guy?

A murderous tackle has just mowed me down.

Maradona died a second time.

I look at my daughter in disbelief.

However, it is not hermetic to football.

Anyway, in this home, she has no choice.

She is sensitive to Griezmann's eyes, she admires Mbappé's speed, she laughs at Zlatan's exits and ...

The idea that future generations can be passionate about a ball (...) without knowing Maradona, is simply unacceptable.

- Who is this guy?

- My daughter, come here.

How to say, how to explain yourself?

(as sings Anne Sylvestre, whose Fabulettes video she has seen 1000 times, beautifully illustrated by Christine Léyat and Claude Jacquin).

So this is it.

Maradona is dead and the mere utterance of this sentence cannot be.

The idea that future generations can get excited about a ball, run in the meadows chasing it, jump for joy after scoring a goal, without knowing Maradona, is simply unacceptable.

It is unacceptable to me, it is unacceptable to you.

Because Maradona IS football and always will be, way beyond this terrible moment when we have to use the past towards him.

He is football just like any other.

As well as certain gestures and achievements.

Just like the Cruyff turn of the great Johan, the alcoholic hook of Garrincha, the multiple exploits of Pelé, the surreal statistics of Messi and Ronaldo, the roulette of Zidane, the elastico of Rivellino popularized by Ronaldinho, but in reality invented by Sergio Ichico an anonymous Japanese player, that the bicycle of Leonida da Silva, that ... In the same way?

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No ... Because Maradona is football with an extra soul.

A very big supplement of soul.

Imagine my daughter.

Imagine the people of Naples, the battered city in southern Italy, synonymous with the mafia, whose club was never much before the arrival of El Diez.

Imagine an outcast town yet so beautiful, whose entire pride has slipped into Diego's shoes.

Imagine my daughter, a country, Argentina, wounded for years by a military junta, exploding with joy in the summer of 1986, when the genius of Lanús, helped by nine plots plus Burruchaga, almost alone conquered the world title .

Imagine a religion in which the Gods wear shorts and represent all the citizens of their country

Imagine hundreds of thousands of papelitos, the noble version of toilet paper, flooding the Azteca stadium in Mexico City, just as much as the streets of Buenos Aires, to the sole glory of a slightly fucked up and ill-formed kid.

Imagine those same deserted streets today, letting filter the dismal complaint of an entire nation, confined for months, having just lost its soul.

Imagine a people so often stipended, both mocked and feared, in the shadow of death squads, regaining all their pride at the evocation of Dieguito, the one who was excluded from the coronation of 1978, offered to Mario Kempes by the sinister General Videla.

Above all, imagine, my daughter, that football, in certain regions, is not just a sport that we talk about in the sluggishness of an overly watered aperitif, or slumped down on a sofa stained with beer.

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Imagine a religion in which the Gods wear shorts and represent all the citizens of their country.

Imagine a sport that weighs more economically than most of the other sectors represented by serious men in costume.

(Finally, in football too, and now, above all, the costume is required).

Imagine it all, and think that without Pele's, without Maradonas, it wouldn't have more flavor than an anonymous curling game.

So I tell you, my daughter, from Barcelona to Madrid, from Munich to Dortmund, from Milan to Turin, from London to Liverpool and Manchester, from Paris to Marseille, from Porto to Lisbon, From Amsterdam to Rotterdam, if crowds vibrate on a daily basis, if imbeciles fight, if girls and boys cry for a goal, if cessions of the Italian parliament turn into fist fight, if the Champs-Élysées light up with a thousand lights one evening in July 1998, c 'is because one day, a legend named Diego Armando Maradona, crossed, ball to the feet, an entire stadium, dribbling the entire England team, in the semi-final of the World Cup, to finish by marking the goal of the legend, just after the one offered to him by the hand of God.

Just that.

Offered by the hand of God.

And in my memory.

This is the only time that I have seen God really interfere in the affairs of men.

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However, by way of epitaph, Maradona himself had shown the way, setting it aside from the divine, to bring it back to the level of this people he loved so much and who gave him back so well: "

. "

So remember, my daughter.

And all of us with.