Luis Ceriotto
11/27/2020 2:20 PM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 11/27/2020 2:20 PM
Diego Maradona
will have a
statue
at the Ezeiza airport.
It was promised this Friday by businessman
Eduardo Eurnekian
, owner of the airport concession, through a funeral message published in the newspaper La Nación.
"You will have your statue!"
Says the notice, which is signed by "AA2000" but was
personally published by Eurnekian
, as confirmed by those close to the 87-year-old businessman.
"They have known each other since 1978, when (César) Menotti recommended him to" take care of "him for the next World Cup," the sources said.
Eurnekian, then a textile entrepreneur, was linked to Nisan Devecyan, owner of the textile Unisol and since 1975 representative of the Puma brand for Argentina.
The way to "take care" of Maradona was a contract with Puma as a sponsor, which would last for the next two decades until, after the 1994 US doping, the German brand withdrew its support.
Later, the commercial link between Maradona and Puma was also going to be reestablished, but by then Eurnekian had already opened the textile business.
In all cases, these were links that spanned
decades
, both Eurnekian's with Maradona and with Menotti himself.
The businessman and the DT continue to see each other, even in these days that they have to take more precautions because of the pandemic.
The bond with Maradona was more unstable, those close to Eurnekian added, but it always remained.
In the second half of the 90s, when the businessman was preparing his arrival as an airport concessionaire, it was when he proposed to Maradona that his statue should be in Ezeiza.
They say that Diego accepted, delighted.
"Now the question is how the project will be carried out. Something is there, but it is too premature," the sources added.
At the Ezeiza airport there is a single statue: a bust of the Swedish diplomat
Raoul Wallenberg
, who had been chosen by the War Refugee Board created by US President Franklin Roosevelt, to help Jewish families escape from Europe.
The Wallenberg bust in Ezeiza is the work of the artist
Gerónimo Villalba
and has been located since 2012 at the pre-boarding gate of Terminal A.
Statue of Raoul Wallenberg, hero of the Second World War, in Figueroa Alcorta and Austria.
In 2012 another bust of Wallenberg was inaugurated in Ezeiza.
Photo: Fernando de la Orden.
Where would a statue of Maradona go?
"The most important thing is to define a place where
it cannot be vandalized,
" the sources close to Eurnekian reasoned at this time.
The reference was not so much for the incidents on Thursday at the Casa Rosada, but for a more specific piece of information: the statue of Lionel Messi located in the Costanera Sur, which was vandalized practically a few hours after its location.
