Watching it. I'm sure he had the ball on a string. Tremendous talent, but like a lot of geniuses it soon went tits up.
No doubt about that. Like most his genious was his talent for football. Sadly his advisors manipulated him in the areas he was clueless about.
The greatest player there's ever been. A skillfully made documentary that gives an insight into the crazy claustrophobic ruinous life he led at Napoli. Outstanding stuff.
Looking forward to watching this. I was born in the 70s/ kid of the 80s and the brief glimpses I saw of him on TV at the time were often unreal. Pound for pound might be well have been the greatest ever. Although C Ronaldo is a series contender to that claim.
There have been a number of 'greatest ever' players and it seems unfair to relegate them to 'not as good as' status. Cruyff, Pele. Messi, CR, Best, Charlton, Matthews. I was lucky enough to see Maradona play for Napoli. He was man marked and often double marked, despite this he managed to orchestrate much of the play and baffle his markers in the tightest situations. His control of the ball (brain to feet coordination) was the best Ive ever seen - check out some of his playful warm ups on YouTube. Maradona had a phenomenal onfield presence which manifested itself in a form of mass loathing/fear of the opposing crowd when he got the ball at his feet in a bit of space in midfield. Smell the fear. This was a in league where Gullit - Van Basten- Rijkaard- Baresi- Maldini were at Milan, Baggio was at Juve etc, Matthaeus and Brehme at Inter.Tough skillful brutal defenders in every team. He dragged Argentina to a WC in 86.....they were dead average without him, and got Napoli from nowhere to the title.Thta's why he is so revered in those places, because at times he carried an average team. It's one thing to do the biz at Barca like Messi does, in a great side- could he do it for a bang average team? Evidence suggest that for Argentina, he can't drag them up. I'me no fan of F1 but same director has done a similar doc on Ayrton Senna, which I will seek out on the basis of this Maradona one .
I remember Serie A of that time - think BSB (or some pre-Sky as we know it provider) were showing it in the UK post '86 and a mate had it - combined with English clubs' ban made it even more compelling. I agree with your synopsis too - Brown, Burruchaga, Valdano were the best of the rest from what I recall of that WC winning team. Maybe it discusses this in the docu but I remember reading a while back regarding how culturally something like that handball was viewed in the land of silver. It was seen as a positive, a great steet trick/conjuring/a cunning deception - had its own specific term for it - forget the Spanish for it now as I don't speak that language.
There is little to suggest Maradona was a habitual cheat (on the pitch) and that one famous incident skews perceptions of him here like how Thierry Henri is perceived in Ireland. Forget about all those great goals, he cheated us in one incident! Argentina were not expected to do well in WC86 and there is dressing room footage of the team singing an anti Press song as the media had written them off beforehand. His cheat v England was all good in their eyes as it was against England. Complex country is Argentina, polo and RU players, plenty of Brit settlers, also French and Italians, could almost have been like the USA of south America. Finger of blame most commonly pointed at southern italian immigrants importing corruption, gangsterism and dodgy dealings.
Interesting pre-tournament preview - copied from https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/whate-were-the-odds-in-the-tournaments.1945504/ please log in to view this image