On the night of March 31, 1991, the telephone rang at Raffaella Iuliano's house. His father, historical press chief of Naples, froze.
"Come here." Was over.
Maradona received them minutes later at the door of his house in the Posillipo neighborhood. He wore a blue tracksuit and slippers with stuffed dogs. On the ground floor there were people crying, everything was long faces in the family. Some journalists hid among the garden hedges to have the first photograph of the exodus. FIFA had suspended him a few days before after a doping control: 15 months in the stands, the worst sentence, 259 games and 115 goals later. The glorious cycle in Naples, where a 1.68 boy from poor Villa Fiorito occupied an altar reserved for the saints for seven years, was lost in the wake of a plane to Buenos Aires with a stopover in Rome. Many years passed before the alleys of Forcella and Sanità, still papered with murals in honor of the myth, were to meet again with their last benefactor. He and the city had eaten each other.
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The legend of Naples, where Barça de Leo Messi arrives on Tuesday, universal heir of the most important man in this city after San Gennaro, always fed on myths capable of riding the historic fracture of Italy. Men who worked miracles and defended an indomitable sense of freedom often confused by northern Italy with the whims of simple terroni (paletos). When the summer of 1984 began to sound the name of Maradona, the street raised the signing to a matter of life or death. “It was one of ours. A Neapolitan born in Argentina, ”jokes Gennaro Montuori, the man who made the stadium curve become disgusting every Sunday for 30 years. Diego was the perfect nemesis of Juventine Michel Platini, perhaps the favorite villain of San Paolo at that time.
"He never hurt anyone, just himself," says a family friend
The Maradona case, still revered on bar altars that contain a lock of her hair, already transcended the club's offices. Montuori, without waiting for it, found the key in his pocket. Jorge Cyterszpiler, the first agent of the Argentine, went to see him at the baptism of his son. “He contacted me through Dino Celentano [leader of Naples]. He showed up at the ceremony and released me: 'Maradona wants Naples, but we need your support. You have to make a mess, ”he recalls surrounded by intimate photos with the Argentine on the ground floor of a building in the neighborhood of Miano, where he manages a set for his sports broadcasts, plagued by former players of that period.
Maradona consumed his genius in Barcelona after the serious ankle injury [on September 24, 1983] and the first wrong companies. "Here it came with that problem," says Montuori. The city was in crisis, the bank of Naples on the verge of bankruptcy and the Camorra consummated its greatest violent escalation. The president of Naples, Corrado Ferlaino, was still pondering the decision. "That summer we wanted to make a box and asked for a friendly with Barça," he recalls. “They told us that Maradona was sick and wouldn't play, but it was a lie. Cyterszpiler confirmed that they had broken and then we launched for him. ”
The street caught fire. Montuori called “seven or eight boys” and they left under Ferlaino's house, in the exclusive piazza dei Martiri to press. “There was no Internet or social networks. Thousands of cars stopped, whistling ... We lit flares, we started singing Diegoooo ... ". The mess was mounted, but Barça did not loosen and Cyterszpiler asked for more wood. "He told us to throw a bomb in Barcelona or something," he smiles now. “We answered that that was Camorra's things, we were the peace ultras. Maradona had to come for love. ”
"It was a sociopolitical phenomenon with a ball," says his fitness coach
On July 5, 1984, he set foot in San Paolo, where 70,000 people were waiting. The Naples, third by the tail last season and without looking to win anything, paid 13,500 million lire to Barcelona [today seven million euros], making it the most expensive signing in the history of football. But he also opened a formidable Pandora box that changed the history of the city, in which he himself was trapped.
Raffaella Iuliano, whose birthday Maradona always attended religiously - "not a single child came to see me, of course," he admits with a laugh -, accurately archives all those memories in which his father was always in the front row. On the dining room table of his apartment in Fuori Grotta, from where the San Paolo can be seen clearly, he shows photos and memories of the striker's wedding in Buenos Aires. Carlo Iuliano, legendary journalist of the Ansa agency, became his intimate friend. Pioneer of football communication - perhaps the first in this trade - protected him as far as he could from the flash of the spotlights. It happened from the first press conference, when he interrupted a journalist who asked about Camorra's relationship with the astronomical signing. A shadow that would accompany Maradona for seven years and that crystallized with the famous photograph inside a shell-shaped jacuzzi next to the bonnet Carmine Giuliano, a member of the most powerful clan at the time.
He was going down the trash by tapping the ball down the four-story staircase
Naples, with Rino Marchesi on the bench, finished eighth in Maradona's first year. It was a bad season. Or maybe the best, contradicts his physical trainer during all that stage, Fernando Signorini. On day 13, the team was third in line and there were games in which Maradona did not touch the ball. Those responsible for the club met with the players before the game with Udinese and the general director, Italo Lodi, a guy who revolutionized the sale of emotions in football, asked the team why the hell they didn't give it to the star. Salvatore Bagni, midfielder and captain, replied that he was always marked. Diego replied: 'You give it to me that I will see what I do later.' From that date, Naples made the same points as Verona, which was champion that year. “Diego was the top scorer. But the team only reached 8th, ”Signorini recalls. It didn't matter, everyone understood what was going to happen. Especially those who saw him daily in training.
Massimo Filardi, a promising 19-year-old defender, arrived in the second season and shared with him four years of costumes. “He went with extreme care not to hurt him. It was the most valuable thing we had and I saw him do things you would never believe. But beyond his quality, he was an extraordinary guy who always had the right word for the youngest. He allowed Naples to strengthen himself with players like Careca, Giordano, Lemao… Everyone wanted to come. ”
Maradona's first circle was always humble people, club employees. Saverio Vignati was in charge of San Paolo for 30 years. He was the first to enter and the last to leave. Lucia Rispoli, his wife, was the only cook and housekeeper in the footballer's house. “I only made Neapolitan food. Pasta with potato and provokes ... Huge amounts of fruit salad. I always brought him a mortadella sandwich before the games, ”he recalls in the living room, furnished with all the objects left by the player at his departure. His daughter was the nanny of Dalma and Gianina. His son Massimo, who today deals with the museum of objects in Maradona that he bequeathed to his father [his bank of the locker room, t-shirts all the teams he played on, the transfer contract with Barça ...], every Monday he would play to futsal with him. Sometimes Maradona showed up to eat at his home, in the working-class neighborhood of Secondigliano, unleashing the delirium of the kids who spent the afternoon in a bank. “One day we had finished dinner and my mother was tired. We do not have an elevator and did not feel like lowering the garbage. Diego did it by tapping the ball with his foot on the four floors of the stairs, ”he explains on the sofa where the player sat for seven years.
Maradona was crowned the summer of 1986 in Mexico when Naples was still waiting for the definitive advent. I had prepared it mentally throughout the year. Signorini revives: “It was his World Cup. It was played in a place that was not going to have persecutory marks. He would have more freedom due to the height and pollution of the DF. I always told him to bite him that it was his World Cup or that of Platini. The players who make a great World Cup then give in the season. He does not. The following year, Naples, for the first time in 60 years of history, put the south above the opulent teams of the north and took its first scudetto, which would be accompanied by a second and a UEFA Cup. And also the first problems.
Maradona, already immersed in an escalation of cocaine use, night parties and bad companies, became an unfriendly character in Italy. On March 17, 1991, after the match that Naples won 1-0 at home against Bari, Maradona tested positive for doping control. There were also Gianfranco Zola and Florin Raducioiu. The Argentine, frightened, called the manager Luciano Moggi ... But Moggi may already be in other matters, because he did not solve anything and the positive for cocaine appeared on all the covers shortly after. On April 6 he was suspended for the next 15 months.
Many in Naples today believe that Maradona was already too uncomfortable. “It was a sociopolitical phenomenon built through the ball. There were no players who spoke like that or allowed themselves to criticize even journalists. His answering being was imposed, he could not avoid rebelling against the established power. That was the beginning of that dislike for the character. And everything crystallized when Argentina left Italy out of its World Cup. They spoiled an archimillionaire business of an already prepared merchandising , ”says Signorini.
"For the parties I made mortadella sandwiches," revives her cook
The night he left Naples, beset by scandals and paparazzi , most of his friends did not arrive in time at his house on the Via Scipione Capece to say goodbye. The door was already closed when the Vignati family arrived, with their "Neapolitan mother" in front. "He never hurt anyone, he did it only to himself, but they knocked him down," says Massimo. One theory, that of the perfect crime against Maradona, today became the official version of that break. César Luis Menotti, who recommended his signing for Barça, sharpened the argument in his own way, Signorini recalls. “I told him he was like Jesse James, unbeatable with the revolver. But as the gunman, one day he left the gun on the sofa in a living room, climbed into a chair to dust a crooked box and shot him in the back. ” In Naples, 29 years later, he has everything forgiven.
Rewriting history is impossible
Corrado Ferlaino was clear. Diego's signing would transform the entity and place it where it had never been able to reach. “Naples was not a great team in those days. We had not won anything and the season before signing, we finished third in the queue. Fortunately, nobody should have told Maradona, ”jokes on the phone who was president and owner of the entity from 1969 to 2000, with different intervals outside the club. No one explains exactly why the Argentine chose to live in Naples and play in a club without the power of the northern teams.
“But we got ahead of Juventus and other teams that wanted it. Although, by his character, he would never have fit into Turin, ”he says. No one imagined what would come. Nor how difficult it would be to forget him.
Naples did not become a competitive team again in the following years. After two descents to Serie B and several economic crises, it ended up breaking and losing the sports license in 2004.
Aurelio De Laurentiis, a member of the mythical family of film producers, took over what was left of the club in 2007 and managed to make him reborn from his ashes. Rafa Benítez arrived on the bench in 2013, and won an Italian Cup. They landed signings like Higuaín and Cavani, and ended up playing an effective football with Sarri, who managed to put Juve in difficulty. But rewriting history in Naples after Maradona is impossible.
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