"Maradona will never die," Varsky editorial 10:15
(CNN Spanish) -
Diego Maradona has died.
The news is horrible.
Sad.
And it is still intolerable.
The world mourns the person who loved football the most.
The relationship between Diego and the ball is, without a doubt, the most virtuous of his life.
Today the planet mourns the death of a person who transformed football into art.
Each one of the fans in Argentina and in the world has their favorite Maradona moment.
Some play with the Argentine National Team, all of Mexico 86, in Naples, in Argentinos Juniors, in Boca, in Barcelona, in Seville, in training.
Diego loved soccer more than anyone else.
Perhaps there was someone who could have played as well as him, Pelé, Di Stefano, Cruyff, Messi.
But no one, I assure you, loved football as much as Maradona.
Diego screamed each goal as if it were the last of his life.
And I'm not just referring to those he scored as a professional, on television shows, in games with friends.
Diego was transformed when he talked about soccer.
He had a passion, knowledge or vocation to explain.
He was talking about tactics, about technique.
He had a lot of respect and a lot of love for football.
It inspired many boys who are today stars or who have already retired, who have shown their sadness on social networks.
The list is impressive, from Ronaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo, Tony Kroos, Raúl, Sergio Ramos, Iniesta, Drogba.
All, absolutely all, current and past stars, have shown this sadness for the death of Maradona.
We know perfectly well that it is not about the death of a saint.
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Diego made mistakes in his personal life, made questionable decisions and those decisions hurt many people in his inner circle, in his family.
Fortunately, time allowed him to repair some of the damage caused by those decisions.
We have it perfectly clear.
And I think of those emotional tasters who say "how can it be that they are spending so much time on it and expressing so much sadness for a person who made so many mistakes in his life?"
In Asif Kapadia's documentary, a masterpiece by English director Asif Kapadia, who is called "Diego Maradona", Fernando Signorini, Diego's physical trainer, a longtime friend, said an extraordinary phrase about this dissociation between Diego and Maradona .
He told Pelusa, 10: "I go everywhere with Diego, but with Maradona I don't even go to the corner."
And Maradona was that character who built 10 himself to defend Diego.
And surely there are many more rigorous people with Maradona and less rigorous with their own Diego and their own Maradona, that we all have in our decisions that we make beyond our work.
Maradona made a lot of people happy and not only the Argentines for that Mexico 86 title. He inspired, he infected many kids, as I told you, he took soccer to another dimension, but that was also the case with other sports.
Diego admired Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer.
He was interested in discussions of football, tennis, boxing, the NBA.
And at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, he shared many moments with the Argentine delegation that asked for a harangue from Maradona, be it the basketball team that was going to play a game for the medal, the field hockey lionesses, who were also looking hang a metal at that Olympic Game.
And Diego was able to enjoy that moment, I mean, he was an ambassador of Argentine sports.
Were we ready for this day?
No. We knew it was coming.
Diego had flirted with death in a couple of serious episodes he was able to get out of, in 2000 and 2004. We were almost used to that immortal certificate, of causing a dynamic of near death and resurrection in just one year.
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He was about to die in 2004. He lost 30 kilos and drove flawlessly on the night of the 10th, in 2005, a program that aired on Channel 13. And in that program there was a production of Maradona interviewing Maradona or Diego interviewing Maradona.
And this is a dialogue.
15 years earlier, foreboding:
«-If you had to say a few words from the cemetery to Maradona, what would you say to him?
-What would you say?
And don't ask me that… Thank you for playing soccer.
Thank you for having played soccer, because it is the sport that gave me the most joy, the most freedom, like touching the sky with my hands.
Thanks to the ball.
Yes, I would put a tombstone: thanks, thanks to the ball. "
Four years earlier he had said "the ball does not stain."
In that farewell match on the Boca court, where he ended up with Román Riquelme's shirt, playing for the Argentine team.
Diego and the ball had a beautiful relationship for a long time and it was that bond that today ends up uniting the entire planet at the time of sadness, of perplexity by the news of death.
We knew it was coming, but we were not prepared.
Just, in addition, in a context of pandemic and with social networks that today amplify the feeling and that allow us to see, for example, how tribute is paid from Juventus, England, Napoli, Barcelona, to the teams in which he played, the teams The ones he played against, the footballers he faced, the footballers who saw him on television.
It is not only about this generation or the previous one, that of my parents, but also that of our children, who never saw him play Maradona and, nevertheless, are sad and hug us and share our sadness, our tears.
And speaking of ties, Diego relied a lot on his parents, on Don Diego, 'Chitoro', and on Dalma, 'Doña Tota', and he was losing them in the last ten years.
Diego was seeing how this relationship with the parents stopped first from the health of his parents and then, of course, with death.
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And he felt, I say, at the time, that the departures of both Dona Tota and Don Diego tore part of his soul.
And he was always mother's baby to Dona Tota.
And Diego missed a very important bulwark, a support that he still had at 40, 50 years old, because it doesn't matter if you're 20, 30 or 40, sometimes you need that moment of being a mother's baby.
My mom died, for example, four years ago and I miss her every day and I think everyone in life wants to have that mommy baby moment again.
The last five years had shown him very thin physically.
He took on a coaching role when he wasn't healthy enough to exercise responsibility.
Yes, aside from the fact that he did not show up to all the trainings later, decisions from his environment took him away from the family, a gang ended up squeezing every last drop as if it were an orange and he could no longer make decisions, even after the subdural hematoma .
He was transferred home too quickly when many doctors were considering a longer postoperative in the establishment, and one marks a great contrast between what Diego was in 2014 and 2015 with what he was during the last 18 months.
If Diego's passage through Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata had something good, it was that at least he could still be on the courts with an audience.
It was played in Argentina before the pandemic and tributes were paid that in the end ended up being tributes as thanks to everything Diego has left behind.
His death changes nothing about Diego's legacy and impact on soccer.
It was already a myth, it was already a legend.
I want to close with a phrase that José Mourinho, the current Tottenham coach, who has already paid tribute to Diego on his Instagram account, says in a work about Bobby Robson.
Mourinho says: “A person actually dies when the last person who loved him dies.
Taking into account all the people who loved him and who love Diego, us, our parents, our grandparents, our children, Diego Armando Maradona will never die ».
Diego Armando Maradona