The Telegraph

How Diego Maradona’s life spiralled to depart him a hobbling, arthritic shadow of his former self

The ultimate moments of Asif Kapadia’s magnificent movie Diego Maradona are virtually too painful to observe. To a soundtrack of an interview carried out when he was on the peak of his powers in Napoli, when he talks of the soccer pitch being a refuge, a sanctuary, a spot of freedom the place he might specific himself with out worry, we see Maradona in his late fifties trying to play five-a-side together with his buddies. The juxtaposition of the fantastic athlete of our collective reminiscence and the hobbling, pot-bellied, arthritic shadow he turned is a telling reflection of his decline. So precipitous was his fall, it virtually seemed to be the consequence of a Faustian pact, an settlement to change into probably the most influential footballer on the earth in change for a sporting afterlife of distress and self-loathing. The disappointment is that any analysis of his genius can’t however take account of what occurred subsequent. It had been lengthy coming, however we got first indication of his unravelling on the 1994 World Cup. The person who had dragged his nation to victory in 1986, then virtually repeated the trick in 1990, was by now a drug-addled parody of his glory days. His goggle-eyed celebration when he scored his final ever objective for his nation within the sport in opposition to Greece was a symptom of his private nightmare: the person was wired past restore. Banned, traduced and shamed, his taking part in profession was over. However again in his homeland he was nonetheless revered. And no surprise, given what he had delivered. He parlayed his superstar right into a profitable flip as a chat present host, earlier than his lack of ability to regulate his appetites compromised his facility to border a query. Nonetheless, he knew about soccer, so in 2005 he was supplied a task as sporting director at Boca Juniors, his outdated membership in Buenos Aires’s most roughhouse neighbourhood. In a stadium that, 25 years after he final kicked a ball there, stays a shrine to his brilliance, his very presence was an inspiration; Boca received 4 trophies in two seasons with him watching enthusiastically from his non-public field. In a fashion that was to change into a sample, although, it didn’t final. He fell out with the membership president and was gone.