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Diego Maradona (with hat, October 30th): To relax near the daughter
Photo: POOL / REUTERS
The worry was great.
With football fans all over the world, but especially in Argentina, of course.
Now there is a cautious all-clear: eight days after a brain operation, the Argentine football legend Diego Maradona left the hospital.
The 60-year-old left the clinic in Buenos Aires on Wednesday in an ambulance, as reported by AFP news agency reporters.
A column of Maradona fans drove behind the ambulance.
The 1986 soccer world champion had a blood clot removed from the brain on Tuesday last week.
Shortly before Maradona's discharge, his doctor Leopoldo Luque published a photo of himself and his famous patient on the Instagram online network.
The soccer star can be seen with a plaster on his head.
Maradona is expected to continue recovering from the operation in Tigre, 30 kilometers north of Buenos Aires.
His daughter Giannina lives nearby.
The presence of people close to him could help Maradona to recover, said the psychologist Carlos Díaz, who is part of the team responsible for treating the football star.
Maradona's lawyer Matías Morla also said that he must now be surrounded by family and medical carers, this will make him "happy".
Maradona is currently going through "perhaps the most difficult time of his life".
Problems after years of addiction
"It's a miracle the blood clot was discovered in his head," said Morla.
Maradona was admitted to a hospital in La Plata on Monday last week because he was unwell.
A scan then discovered the clot.
Maradona was then transferred to the special clinic in the capital.
After the operation there, Maradona's discharge was delayed, which Luque had justified last week with "confusion" and "withdrawal symptoms" of the patient.
The doctor did not comment on this.
Maradona has a long history of drug and alcohol addiction.
The football legend has had health problems to contend with in the past.
Maradona has already suffered two heart attacks, fell ill with hepatitis and had gastric bypass surgery because of being seriously overweight.
He was also treated several times for drug addiction.
To this day, according to his doctors, he regularly takes psychotropic drugs.
Maradona is currently the coach of the soccer club Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata.
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jok / AFP