(The prequel to Once Upon a Time in Naples)The Journey… The rumours he was born under a star and delivered by the hand of god are not strictly true, but in the early hours of Sunday 30th October 1960, Diego Armando Maradona entered this world. Raised in the slums of Villa Fiorito, Buenos Aires, the word was out on Diego before he was even ten. Not so much a comet, more an eruption as the young boy they called El Pelusa, (The scraggly haired one), blazed through the Argentinos Juniors youth side Los Cebillitos, (the little onions), to make a first team debut at just fifteen. The Journey continued-the following year, Maradona was picked by the legendary coach Cesar Menotti to play for the national side. Argentina fell in love with the kid from the ghetto blessed with magical skills who could make the ball sing and do encores on request. Diego Maradona was a phenomenon. A move to his boyhood dream club Boca Juniors followed for an incredibly, incident-filled season-a championship won and the Barra Bravas say hello, before two explosive years at FC Barca, igniting the Camp Nou and containing enough controversy to fill a lifetime! Between, from the dust-bowl shacks of Villa Fiorito, to the Dodge city mansion in Pedralbes, Barcelona, a lifetime lived. Maradona, the Generals and the road to Naples, extraordinary. Then, a dark side. The French poet Charles Baudelaire once wrote, ‘The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.’ During the 1970’s, Argentina was under the fascist, jackboot heel of a murderous military junta, the likes hardly witnessed since Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. This is the other side of the journey as we tell of the great footballing fix of Mundial 78, Colombian drug cartels, kidnappings, torture chambers, innocent people thrown from planes turning the waters of the River Plate blood red-The Mothers of the Disappeared, Los Desaparecidos. A rich, concoctions of heroes and villains. Never forgetting amidst the darkness on this journey, so much beauty too-back on the pitch, Kempes, Socrates, Passarella, Zico, Rossi and the man straight out of a Sergio Leone Spaghetti western. Claudio Gentile. Above all though, the kid born into poverty, who rose to become a footballing God to millions. Before there was ever, even talk of Once Upon a Time in Naples. Seven years under the volcano and utter mayhem! Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy the rollercoaster journey of Diego Armando Maradona!...@johnluddsjohnludds@gmail.com
