The Catalans had Diego, but they have not really loved each other.
When they sold him to Napoli, they considered him a player with only one leg because Andoni Goikoetxea broke the other (as you well know, the Spanish press defined the entry of the Basque defender as a “crime”) and, above all, uncontrollable.
In a way, we must be grateful for Barça's myopia of those years, which cannot stand a footballer who talks too much.
Diego had fought with the management and on the field it bothered him that he was the leader.
Coming from Argentina and wanting to rule at the Camp Nou.
He leaves Barcelona devastated, hungry and restless and that is exactly what has made him a Neapolitan.
But how could he explain to non-Neapolitans that Maradona had fully embraced the spirit of the city and its inhabitants?
It was a natural alliance, a reunion.
When he first arrived at the stadium, the San Paolo was packed, as if a final was being played.
Never, in any other part of Europe, will something like this happen to any player.
The whole stadium full.
Life after Maradona
An atypical hero: Maradona in data
Now that it's gone, I feel like I've suddenly grown old.
Imagine what it means, at age 10, to have the best player in the world on your team, and to have him in a southern team always boycotted, humiliated, marginalized by a football system that favored northern teams.
How can I tell what Diego Armando Maradona means to a Neapolitan?
I will never make it.
I belong exactly to the Maradona Generation, the one that grew up in Naples with the cult of Diego.
I am from 1979, I was seven years old in the first league title of Naples and ten in the second.
Diego represents the union of all the best and the worst that my land has generated.
How could he explain that just like a god, the vices, mistakes, crimes he committed were just the shadow that made the god even brighter?
Exactly like the gods, whose vices made them so much like us.
However, in their cruelty, in their error, their courage, their quality, they further emphasized their value, their quality.
How can I explain that Maradona was the rescue?
Imagine a land that had just emerged from a devastating earthquake (the one in 1980), sick with unemployment, torn apart by the struggles of the Camorra.
Imagine that a boy born in a very poor neighborhood arrives, who promises to bring happiness and fulfills that promise.
That allows Naples to be admired and feared throughout the world for its beautiful game.
That Argentine boy who just got to Naples finds that 80,000 people have come to greet him, just to greet him.
There the pact between the city and Maradona is sealed: Diego promises to give his best and the city promises to love him.
And so it will be.
I will never forget when we went to win the UEFA Cup in Stuttgart and the stadium was full of Neapolitan expats who felt like they were winning for the first time.
Diego was perfect for Naples, he was Argentine-Neapolitan, he seemed made to make this town fall in love.
In 1984 he ran to play in a potato field in Acerra, in one of his constant gestures of generosity.
The father of a boy who needs an operation to save his life, asked Maradona to play to raise money in Acerra.
Ferlaino, the president, does not agree to the request and Maradona pays a clause of 12 million lire and plays in that muddy field of potatoes, saying: "Fuck Lloyd's of London, I'm going to play anyway."
The titles that Napoli won with Maradona were the revenge of the south over the north, because they showed that it was not always whoever had the most money, but whoever fought the most.
Maradona became the compensation for everything that Naples never had.
With him was someone who kept a promise of happiness that everyone had betrayed.
Diego was there, he never betrayed: he never changes his shirt, and above all he never wore the Juventus shirt.
After the first league title with Naples he could have gone anywhere, Berlusconi had offered him double what he earned with the Neapolitans, but Diego stayed.
And the Neapolitans were very grateful to him.
At the 1990 World Cup in Italy, the Italian team reached the semifinals against Maradona's Argentina, who that same year had won the second league title with Naples.
A terrible fate wanted the match to be played precisely at the San Paolo stadium.
I was almost 11 years old and that night I was there with my father.
When Schillaci scored 1-0 in the 18th minute, the stadium rejoices.
But you feel that something is wrong in the stands ... In the 68th minute, Caniggia tied for Argentina, and non-Neapolitan, non-native fans begin to blame Maradona.
And there something happened that had never happened before and will probably never happen again in the history of football: the stands could not allow Maradona to be offended, so the Italian flags stopped waving, the Neapolitan fans lined up against his soccer team.
We started shouting: “Diego!
Diego!".
On the other hand, we were used to doing it.
At that time it was Maradona who represented the San Paolo fans, rather than a national team of players from other cities in Italy, from Rome, Milan, Turin.
Maradona was encouraged, Maradona was defended because at that time Maradona was our land.
It had nothing to do with geographical limits, shirt, or language: what mattered was that you identified with the man who had made you enjoy, who had made you win and who had also done it correctly.
Maradona experienced the loneliness of talented human beings.
No one would have resisted that pressure.
Requests for money, friendship, recommendations ... A child born in an Argentine favela with few cultural tools could only be crushed.
The yellow press sought any information about him, besieged his home, his private life ... La Camorra understood his weaknesses, provided him with cocaine, prostitutes and extorted money from him.
It was unforgivable that Maradona agreed to hang out with the bosses of the Camorra and traffickers, but he was also a lonely man, only with that talent that always saved him and always made him reconcile with his people, the people he always recognized that he had never put his talent at the service of something.
He always hated power, from Blatter to Matarrese.
He always fought against soccer politicians.
I wanted football to remain football, I wanted skill, the ability to win.
And not because he was a fair person, but because he wanted only the ball to count.
And his people thanked him.
Loyalty in the game, in the pleasure.
Everything that is outside the field you could achieve thanks to the intermediation, with concessions, but not in the field.
In the field the rules of the outside did not work, in another place you needed help, but in the field no, in the field you could get it with your own strength.
This has been the magic of Maradona: let everyone dream and think that dreams can be fulfilled.
When you cheered, you felt immortal.
And now that he is dead, we have all become mortal.
Maradona could only be great in Naples, not despite Naples, but precisely in Naples, and precisely because he had that spirit of redemption and enthusiasm, of melodrama, which allowed us to recognize him as a son of that land.
Maradona was the dream that dissipated all the weight that I saw in my father, in my grandfather Stefano, in my uncles;
All his effort, all his dedication, the difficulties vanished when he saw this man play.
And always play with a rebellious air.
His fascination with Marxist dictators was also part of his rebellious delusion.
Somehow, Maradona wanted not the negotiation of the sport to win, but the sport itself, not the strategy of the sport, but the skill, the ability.
I wanted soccer to remain soccer.
Maradona, like everyone else, wanted to win and feel good, but in life he had to suffer an infinite amount of injustice for not wanting to participate in commercial strategy, in the cunning of a sport determined by agreements.
And not because he was a fair man, but because he wanted to play football, he wanted only the ball to count.
Maradona was with the ball.
And how can I explain to those who are not from Naples what Maradona was?
I can not explain it.
This time we keep this pain so great for us and only for ourselves ... Because only we have had it so close, so unique, so hurt, so bravado, so crazy, so capable of interpreting the joy of many and of doing it in a game, in a simple game that everyone can understand and everyone can play.
A ball in the center of the field, two goals, intelligence, talent, loyalty, skill.
Outside the field you can get everything thanks to mediation, to concessions, but in the field, no.
On the field the outside rules do not work, in other places you need help, but on the field no, on the field you can achieve it only with your strength.
You could do it.
This has been the magic of Maradona: let everyone dream and think that dreams can be fulfilled.
That you could really be a god, because when you looked at him, when you animated, he made you feel immortal.
And now that he has died we realize that God, that Diego was mortal.
We realize that we are mortal.
With his death, we have all become mortal.
Goodbye Diego I owe you the happy moments of my childhood.
Roberto Saviano is a Neapolitan writer and journalist, author of Gomorrah and CeroCeroCero.
