Where Unrest Fights Regret: A Reflection on Maradona
Where Unrest Fights Regret: A Reflection on Maradona
Where Unrest Fights Regret: A Reflection on Maradona
By Kizito Madu
The folly of youth is thinking itself invincible; so the adage of not declaring a man as having lived a happy life until he is on his deathbed still holds true mainly because of youth’s naïveté. Diego Maradona isn’t dead –in fact he’s full of life; recently recorded participating in a street fight after a night out—but he is an old man, and from his own words, he’s much older than his age suggests. In a recent interview with TyC Sports, Diego lamented that if he had not taken drugs, he would be a phenomenal player, adding “However, my daughters know that their old man - even though I am 53 years old - in reality it is as if I am 78 because my life has not been normal. It’s as if I had lived 80 years.“
There are two tragedies in this story: One of lost time and talent in the sense that the best player to ever bully and prance through a football pitch could have somehow been better, and the more funereal allegory of an ancient tragedy; the same characteristics that makes a hero endearing and admirable, become the cause of his downfall. Achilles with pride, Diego and grit.
Maradona’s bullish, non-apologetic and confrontational style of life is not rare among the destitute. And though hope may be, talent is not scarce in the slums. What is rare is the survival, and even more so, the achievement of ambitions. To be the exception is the hope of those staring at the stars from the gutters and it is the most central part of Diego’s story. It is what contrasts him from those who he’s routinely compared to: Messi’s background, while tragic in its own sense –his growth deficiency—lacks the trials with life and death that poverty entails and Pele’s, while it has the poverty, lacks the fearless jump into the unknown and subsequent conquering of foreign lands.
He seems out of place and incapable of change these days. His abrasive behavior is viewed in a harsher light with each passing year and it grows tiresome and overdone. Diego asserts that he has always offered one hundred percent in everything that he’s done and that he’s always done it with his heart, but the rampant feuding with anyone who disagrees with him and his overreactions to slight provocations will stress the leniency of even his biggest supporters. He’s not the boy who has to fight through starvation, scything tackles, other pigheaded children and towering opponents, yet he still acts like it.
Even more saddening is the subject of his previous excesses. Nothing of it is shocking. There are limitless examples of the poor living to the extremes when given the resources: lottery winners, rappers, footballers as well –Garrincha and Adriano most famously. His solemn view of his younger life resembles most of another rare talent who could have been more, Mike Tyson, who spoke on his own reckless living: “The reason I’m like that is because, at 21, you all gave me $50 or $100 million, and I didn’t know what to do. I’m from the ghetto. I don’t know how to act.” Tyson went from being in a “dope house robbing someone to being the Heavyweight champion of the World” and Diego, from watching his mother starve herself –while amusingly suggesting that she was already full– so that her kids would have enough to eat, to having the world as his oyster. It is not reason enough to justify, but it is enough to understand.
Old age has forced him to face his faults and the results of his youth as it does so many others, and we now have a regretful Maradona. Many of his recent interviews have included some form of him analyzing and admitting his errors, though he always does try to rationalize even the most asinine one; pleading that what he did, he did honestly, and those that he transgressed either provoked him or deserved it. Still, that’s more than would have been expected from his younger self. The good news is that it doesn’t seem that he indulges too much anymore – he even has Instagram photos that emphasis a re-dedication to fitness—even though the mournful damage has been done. The bad news remains that Diego doesn’t know how to handle the world if he can’t fight it, and now as a very old man, he’s just picking petty squabbles in order to feed his inner child. And the world, like his body, has grown weary of it.
This piece was written by Kizito Madu, who writes for a variety of outlets, including SB Nation and Live Breathe Futbol. Comments below please.
