Remembering Diego Maradona: Nothing succeeds like excess

The football world mourns Diego Maradona: October 30, 1960 – November 25, 2020

A TROUBLED GENIUS: Diego Maradona, who died yesterday at the age of 60, inspired Argentina to victory in the 1986 World Cup, a success that came after an unhappy two years in Barcelona and before a glorious seven-year spell at Napoli, a club where he was regarded as a God. Picture: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

The death of Diego Armando Maradona at the age of 60 from a heart attack in this year of pestilence robs football of an icon whose greatest supporters from the “barra brava” of the slumlands of La Boca to the Ultras of Curva B in the San Paolo stadium in Naples have frequently been drawn from the rough edges and marginalised sections of society.

In England, he is forever infamously associated with the “Hand of God” goal where he punched the ball past Peter Shilton and into the net for the opener in a 1986 World Cup quarter-final, a moment of redemption for an Argentina brutalised by their own military leaders and suffering from a searing and humiliating defeat in the Falklands War.