During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, José Carlin - now director of En Exergue, a sports publishing house - was media manager for the International Football Federation (Fifa), more specifically in charge of the Argentine team at the Pretoria site in South Africa.
This is how he was brought closer to Diego Maradona, a football legend who died on Wednesday, November 25, and whose first and only experience as a coach was.
“The day of the first press conference, he arrived in a van with tinted windows.
He came out with a huge Havana on his lips and his two Hublot watches.
There were ten people with him: personal press secretary, security guard, etc.
Which were in competition with a team which was there on behalf of the Argentine Federation…, he says.
I took Diego by the arm and led him to an underground passage under the Pretoria stadium, the oldest in the World Cup.
There were mice, but it made him laugh, and we were able to chat quietly ”.
"A little guy" who had "brought him luck"
“A great relationship has been established, without my knowing quite how,” adds José Carlin.
I was working on a fiction inspired by the life of a typical Argentinian singer, El Potro, who died in 2000 in an accident after returning from a big concert.
He had made a song about Diego, which has become a hymn taken up by supporters of all Argentine stadiums.
When El Potro died, Diego went to meditate at the scene of the accident, on the road between Buenos Aires and La Plata ”.
“When he heard that he was moved, looked at me with shining eyes, incredulous,” he recalls.
He encouraged me to write it and to come and see it in Argentina after I wrote it.
It was in 2010 and unfortunately I never took the time to write this book.
"
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“While the site was closing, Diego had sent a letter to Fifa by the Argentine Federation.
The letter explained that a little guy had brought him luck so far and that he wanted him to be present for the rest of the competition, elsewhere than in Pretoria
(Editor's note: Argentina will leave the competition in the quarterfinals )
.
I had become his mascot.
It was I who had to tell him that after a month away from home, I had to find mine.
He gave me all his contact details.
I have been to Argentina often, I almost moved there and I never called him.
It was a suspended moment in my life and I wanted it to stay that way.
"