Naples has two patrons that rival in popularity and devotion: San Gennaro and Diego Armando Maradona.
The first worked the miracle in 1389 with the liquefaction of his blood and later protected the city from an eruption of Vesuvius.
Seen in perspective, it may have been little compared to what the second would do six centuries later.
The altars, the huge murals in the center and the general commotion experienced in the street when hearing the news of his death certified it on Wednesday night.
"Maradona is Naples," Mayor Luigi de Magisitris proclaimed with all solemnity in a televised message.
Photogallery: The life of Diego Armando Maradona
The summer of 1984 began to sound the name of the Argentine and the city immediately realized that he was the chosen one who would change history.
There were demonstrations, roadblocks and container burning in front of the club president's house.
The city was in crisis, the bank of Naples on the verge of bankruptcy and the Camorra was unleashing its biggest storm of lead.
And in those, on July 5, 1984, he set foot in the San Paolo - it will now bear his name - where 70,000 people were waiting.
Never had a player had such a reception.
Corrado Ferlaino, the president of the company, paid 13,500 million lire to Barcelona (today seven million euros), just after breaking his leg, making him the most expensive signing in football history.
Perhaps also the most profitable.
Maradona was a full-fledged Neapolitan saint.
The day of his death, in the middle of the confinement of the city, the three demonstrations that ran through its streets to remember him announced it.
Also the concentration with flares under one of its murals in Quartieri Spagnoli or the citizen mourning declared by the City Council.
The Argentine gave the team its only two
scudetti
, a UEFA Cup and a Coppa Italia.
The Argentine landed a few months before the Irpinia earthquake, which devastated the region and highlighted the inequalities between the north and south of Italy.
No one identified better with this injustice than Maradona, who also came from the lowest.
The history of Naples is also made up of heroes who knew how to ride the southern gap and restore pride to a city despised by the industrial north, which then embodied Juventus in football.
Maradona was the perfect antithesis of
Juventine
Michel Platini, the favorite villain of San Paolo at that time.
The Argentine, as excessive as the city that welcomed him, slipped them in 1985 a fault whose trajectory no one has yet managed to explain.
The following year, on November 9, 1986, he twisted his arm in Turin and 25,000 people celebrated it in the streets of Naples.
The 10th was so important for the city that when Italy played Argentina in the 1990 World Cup, the San Paolo crowd, including the film director Paolo Sorrentino, cheered on the Albicelestes.
Just because Maradona had asked him to.
But he and the city, 115 goals and 259 games later, consumed each other.
Maradona lived two lives in Naples: one by day and one by night.
One would start after each game and plunge into a whirlwind of alcohol, cocaine, and women (he had a son with one of them whom he recognized years later).
The other, more orderly, started from Wednesday when he began to focus on the weekend's meeting and gave himself to his physical trainer.
The bright part took place between his mansion in the luxurious Posillipo neighborhood, where he organized futsal pachangas with friends and lived with his family, and the Paradisso training ground, in the Soccavo neighborhood.
The dark woman got lost in her black Ferrari Testarrossa through the alleys of downtown Forcella, where she became intimate with the Giuliano family, the bosses of the camorra of that period.
A fall that certified the famous photograph inside a
shell-shaped
jacuzzi
next to the Carmine bonnet.
On March 17, 1991, after Napoli won 1-0 at home against Bari, Maradona tested positive for doping control.
A goodbye began to take shape that many in Naples consider still orchestrated.
His physical trainer and man of confidence at that time, Fernando Signorini, remembered a few months ago what he represented.
“It was a socio-political phenomenon built through the ball.
There were no players who spoke like that or allowed themselves to criticize even journalists.
His rebellious being prevailed, he could not help but rebel 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.
An arch-million-dollar business of
ready-made
merchandising
spoiled them
”.
The night he left Naples, overwhelmed by scandals and paparazzi, most of his friends could not even say goodbye to him.
He left with what he was wearing and came back a few more times.
It was difficult.
When it did, the city completely collapsed.
The same thing that will happen now: Naples prepares to venerate its saint in the street.
The days it takes.