How to explain an ordinary middle-aged working woman, roaming in the dull world of “your kind consideration" note-sheets in a city in India, feeling empty, almost as if she has lost a near one, when she hears about the death of a celebrated footballer in a country thousands of miles away?
That Diego Armando Maradona was the first magician she encountered in her childhood.During the 1986 Football World Cup, I was 10. We didn’t own a TV set and my half-yearly exams were nearby. Still, I remember watching with amazement, at someone else's house, the short-statured stocky guy who runs like lightning, the ball stuck on his feet as if with glue, dodging and throwing off defenders on his path with casual ease.
The run, the goals, the assists -- footages of which are now easily accessible through internet, can still make someone feel better on a partlicularly gloomy day.
Reams have been written about the '86 tournament in which, as a famous football critic had said, "The Argentine artist single-handedly delivered his country its second World Cup.” With that, Maradona had barged into the psyche of (till-then) Brazil-crazy football fans of Kolkata. Newspapers were singing his paeans. Bangla children’s magazines like Anandamela were publishing articles on the childhood struggles of the man who can “make the ball listen to him”. We were trying to imitate his run during four-a-side matches in the neighbourhood. (Football was the only game in which I was somewhat okay, not the “elebele", good-for-nothing, in others) My old scrapbook still has an outline figure of Maradona, cut from an Anandamela page which I rediscovered today in internet, thanks to a blog archive called Dhulokhela.
Four years later, during 1990 World Cup, I watched every match of Argentina. The glimpses of Maradona's miracles were coming only in flashes, but it was enough for us. I was secretly coveting a no. 10 Argentina jersey, but did not tell my mom. I had learnt new words like “ball control” and “playmaker”, using them proudly during arguments with peers who doubted Maradona’s genius. If one would raise the issue of “hand of God” in 1986 QF, we will point to the “second goal” in the same match, the majestic 60-metre slice of knife that cut through the hapless English defence. Much later, years after it won the sobriquet of “Goal of the Century” in a 2002 FIFA online poll, I read the English translation of legendary description of that goal by Uruguayan commentator Victor Hugo Morales.
"Maradona on the ball now. Two closing him down. Maradona rolls his foot over the ball and breaks away down the right, the genius of world football. He goes past a third, looks for Burruchaga. Maradona forever! Genius! Genius! Genius! He's still going… Gooooal! Sorry, I want to cry! Good God! Long live football! What a goal!”
Yes, football can offer moments which can make grown people cry. It can create situations when Real Madrid fans will rise to applaud a Barcelona goal, as they did after an iconic strike by Maradona in the El Classico on June 26, 1983.
And because the “golden boy" created so many such moments in his lifetime, his controversies take a backseat in the mind of a fan. Hand of God, Cocaine, Ephedrine, unpaid taxes – all get thrown off the path to goal like opponent defenders.
Maradona Ra Mara Jan Na. Wizards never die.
P.S. I bought a no. 10 Argentina jersey in 2014
