He was great in life, in some even greater than God, and he will be eternal not only because of his phenomenal ability - but mainly because of his charisma • but alongside the great happiness, he inflicted on himself, his environment and his world also shame Farewell to a giant dwarf
One day before the seventh anniversary of Eric's 'drive slowly' - Einstein died Diego Armando Maradona, the man who never drove slowly, never took his foot off the gas and never looked in the mirror to be careful or see what he looked like.
It never interested him.
At 60: Legendary footballer Diego Maradona dies // Photo: Reuters
Like it or not, Maradona was bigger than life.
His face is not just a cluster, but a symbol like John Kennedy or Castro or the Dalai Lama.
Over the years we have seen masses of great footballers, even extraordinary phenomena, but he, like two or three others, will forever - no matter what others do in the future - one of the three greatest footballers in history.
Because the burden he has taken on in his 60s is one that football players of today can not or will not bear.
In many places the title this morning or already yesterday was "God is dead."
There is such a church that believes wholeheartedly that God has taken care of God, and the current pope, who is also Argentine, is his emissary in the Vatican.
Maradona will be timeless not only because of his phenomenal ability, but mainly because he connected it to the extraordinary charisma and populism that led to tectonic shifts between continents, between Europe and America.
He was the first to claim the homeland's insult for the defeat in the Melvinas (Falkland) Islands in the summer of 1982, in that great encounter against England in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.
The stealing of the wallets as a child robbed England with the touch of his hand, "The Hand of God," which took out of Yoram Arbel the great sentence - "It cannot be that Maradona's head is higher than Shilton's hands (goalkeeper Peter Shilton, AP).
To prove that he is not only a robber but also a genius, he overtook more than half of the England team on the way to the second goal, which is considered the goal of the century.
Maradona was an anarchist.
He admired Cuba, hated America but told director Amir Kosturica that he was willing to give up the hand of God for a night with an American sergeant, Julia Roberts.
Farewell to Maradona: Footballer's fans mourn in Italy // Photo: Reuters
What did he die of, someone asked me yesterday.
What not, I replied.
In my eyes Maradona died long ago, but forgot to lie down.
When he was in a critical situation in Buenos Aires years ago, one of the great columnists there wrote and wrote - you will die ...
Because alongside the great happiness, he has inflicted on himself, on his environment, on his country, and on all of us in general, huge shame.
He subdued Milan and Juventus the representative of the wealthy north and enthralled the rebellious Naples, but on the way became a staunch slave to the Gomorrah, the local mafia, which brought him down borrowed with drug addiction.
I saw him end a career at a hallucinatory press conference in Dallas after being caught needing a stimulant drug at the 1994 World Cup, or crashing as the national team coach against Germany in South Africa in 2010.
He was too big for anyone to really talk about his heart and convince him to end up well for history.
"Let history die," he must have told them, "what is it without me."