Maradona The Activist

14.03.2022

When it comes to debates on the greatest football players of all time, the list is often only two names long: the Brazilian legend Pelé and the one they called the El Pibe de Oro.

Diego Armando Maradona was born on October 30, 1960, in Villa Fiorito, a province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The fifth of eight children raised by Diego Sr. and Doña Tota, Maradona grew up in a poor but close-knit household. He received his first soccer ball as a gift at age 3 and quickly became devoted to the game.

The pinnacle of his career came as a member of the Argentinean national team that won the 1986 World Cup. His performance there included two memorable goals in a quarter-final victory over England. The first was scored illegally with his left hand, which Maradona later claimed was the work of “the hand of God” and the second required no supernatural help other than an otherworldly ability to dribble past an onslaught of defenders to find the back of the net. Altogether, Maradona played in four World Cups, and scored an impressive 34 goals in 91 international appearances for Argentina.

Maradona has been hailed as an anti-imperialist, left-wing socialist, who has supported progressive movements.

He counted among his friends the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, Cuba’s late President Fidel Castro, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

He unapologetically supported Palestine, even after hanging up his football boots.

He died of a heart attack on 25 November 2020, at his home in Buenos Aires. Two weeks prior to his death, he had a surgery for a blood clot in his brain.