M like Maradona, M like Messiah

As all the saviors fallen to the earth, everything has been written about Maradona, and not recently, but way before. Phenomenon, criminal, genius, tax evader, messiah, charlatan. Maradona is one of those people that changed the path of history, and everyone agrees about that. As I remember, the most beautiful thing said about his was by Darwin Pastorin (a great Juventus supporter): “The best player I’ve seen is Diego Armando Maradona. Believe me, my son, it will never exist, in the centuries to come, another one like him. Ha made perfection out of imperfection. Short, puffed, devoted to tired, slack, wrong dawns, victims of fans friends and the will to go beyond every rule, Maradona turned a simple ball of leather into a chest of beauty”.

Diego Armando Maradona has been the most discussed player. And it’s the intensity of the discussion - between the ones who condemn him and exalted him - which determines its very nature, not a man but a deity. As for the most ancient religions, there are some that try everything to prove the deceptive nature of the myth, and others that put in a man - which actions are often involuntary and moved by a greater strength - their faith. In some sort of radical fanaticism, which rejects the reason. And the actions themselves - the football ones - the made a Messiah out of Maradona. Those acts, from the first to the last one, show a human being moved by an uncontrolled impulse. 

Maradona doesn’t play football, he is football. And everything he has done - good and bad - was driven by his not being a human being, but as football. That October 30 of 55 years ago, the first sample of football human was born. And it’s not right to talk about the “what ifs”, “what if things had gone differently”, “What if he hadn’t done that”, no. It has all been perfect, everything was written, everything expected. Even from the most certain of the atheists, it will be acknowledged that Diego Armando Maradona has done something supernatural as a footballer. And that’s the beauty Pastorin was talking about. Creating beauty out of nothing. “Maradona is the best because he used to do with oranges what for us footballers was impossible with the ball”, said once Baresi. Maradona created beauty, and he did it also without the football. His messiah-ness is the most indisputable of all for that reason, for the enchantment he did. Vonnegut once said the “it’s the job of the artist to make life more enjoyable for people”. Here, Maradona did it.