Like many people I’m sure, I was really quite shocked the other night to find that Diego Maradona had died. There it was, a notification on my phone’s locked screen, and at just 60 too, younger than me. I confess to not knowing all that much about his life, certainly since his football career came to an end, and to be honest despite being being a huge football fan I haven’t been that interested. However, having read a few obituaries I think I might want to know a bit more about the man himself now, what he went through and the demons with which he tussled throughout his somewhat tortured life.
I have to concede right at the off here that I wasn’t at all impressed by his Hand of God stunt at the Mexico World Cup in 1986, despite the fact it was against England. That indelibly coloured him for me and I've tended to dismiss him for that one action ever since. It offended my innate sense of fair play, especially in the context of the game of football, which I love, and I have never forgiven him for it, despite the many wonders he performed with the ball and whatever else he achieved in the game. For me he was simply a cheat, and a huge cheat at that. The last few days though have caused me to rethink this, probably for the first time, and to reevaluate how fair I've been to hold onto such a harsh view of him instead of seeing the person behind the action.
I’ve been a fan of ‘the beautiful game’ since the age of six and growing up in close-knit South Wales, though this is probably true of the UK in general, I had instilled in me at a young age that a sense of fair play and honour in sport was an important thing. Having played the game to a fairly decent level, in the light of his passing I’ve found myself reflecting on and re-examining a couple of my own experiences this week - one, involving an Argentinian, where I was on the receiving end of similarly despicable behaviour, the other where I was, albeit perhaps somewhat innocently, the perpetrator and villain.
I’ve always been of the mind that antics such as the Hand of God from a prominent world star and role model to absolute millions like Maradona can only but serve to enable others in doing likewise. Surely it sends the message loud and clear that cheating is okay, a perfectly legitimate tool to have in your locker. And even on the biggest stage of all, where the stakes are at their highest and with the whole world watching, anything is fine, even such outrageously flagrant cheating, if you can get away with it. If it helps you gain an advantage then hey, it’s all good.
I appreciate there may have been other factors at play here for the Argentinian people, since it occurred not long after the Falklands war. That was 1982, and as a recently-emerged critically thinking adult the whole thing was for me just such a sad travesty. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that the UK and much of its populace could still be roused to such jingoistic heights as to so readily go onto a war footing over a tiny lingering colonial possession, of no real strategic worth and with a minuscule population, about as far away from London as you could possibly go without going into space. That it soon escalated into all out war and led to the deaths of many innocent people, poor young unsuspecting servicemen from the UK among them, and involve the borderline war crime - no, let's all a spade a spade here - the war crime of the sinking of the Argentinian warship the Belgrano when it was actually in retreat really disturbed and disgusted me. In addition, it had the insidious effect of boosting massively the hitherto seriously flagging image and popularity of then UK Prime Minister and national headmistress throughout the whole of the 80s, Margaret Thatcher.
I was actually in the States at the time, on my Jack Kerouac On The Road ‘gap year’, and to see it all unfold from a foreign perspective, especially in a country that had challenged the shackles of British imperilalism and colonialism itself once upon a time and tended to not be exactly well disposed towards it, made its pettiness seem all the more bizarre. It left me not just disgusted but embarrassed, and feeling very sorry towards Argentina. The fact that a mere 4 years later their lauded maestro Maradona, the greatest footballer of his generation, could pull off such an outrageous stunt on a stage like that, a World Cup quarter final against England with the whole world watching, did hold some kind of wild poetic justice. How that must have immeasurably delighted Argentinians, for whom that war was and still remains many, many times more offensive than it can ever be for me.
However, having said that, he was latin American after all, so even if there had been no such recent war grievance deeply enflaming him and his countrymen, I suspect he would probably still have done it.
When I was growing up there was a sense that when it came to football the Latin countries were overflowing with dirty tricks. As an impressionable 8-year old I remember watching horrified as my beloved (at the time) Manchester United, complete with my first footy hero Georgie Best in their ranks, became the subject of a riot in the aftermath of the World Club Championship - a one-off game of European champions against South American champions - against Estudiantes de la Plata in Argentina in the late 60s. There were news reports that they even got attacked by local police with batons and I remember the shocking pictures of players holding their heads, blood streaming down their faces. And all this without even taking into account the thuggery they had endured earlier at the hands of their opponents during the game itself.
Throughout the 70s blatantly cynical on-field violence seemed to occur as a matter of course in the European competitions whenever Spanish, Portuguese or particularly Italian teams were involved. Though this darker side of the game was definitely alive and well in UK domestic football too, it was never quite as cynical and unbridled. What we had on our football pitches was a uniquely ‘British’ brand of cynicism, just as hard-edged but much more upfront and in your face, and such flagrant underhandedness, almost a modus operandi for these southern European teams, was not a part of it.
I made reference to a couple of experiences of my own here and how they have led me to reflect on my judgement of Diego Maradona this week. The Argentinian I mentioned above was an adversary at the Hawaii State Soccer Championships in the early 2000s and he led the line for one of the teams we played in that tournament. As plucky Kauai, the only island never to be conquered by King Kamehameha and brought into his the Hawaiian Kingdom, there's a fierce sense of separate identity within the island chain. Despite a much smaller population and so a much more limited pool to choose from (hence a goalkeeper in his mid 40s), you can count on Kauai teams to really fight their corner, often with backs firmly against the wall, and they would never go down easily.
In a game against one of the Honolulu teams, we’d gone a goal down early on, and around the 30 minute mark their flamboyant Latino striker, late 20's, lean build with flowing locks, chased a ball down to the byline just inside our penalty area. One of our defenders went with him. As he shielded the ball, his back to our defender, rather than just shadow him our guy naively attempted to put a foot in. There was no need to even play it but he did, and low and behold he was caught in his trap. On first contact, in spite of it being minimal, he yelled out and threw himself theatrically into the air, proceeding to then roll over several times on the ground wailing unconsolably. It wasn't even like it was that convincing but it was enough to con the equally naive referee, about 30 yards away from the play and struggling to catch up, and he pointed right to the spot. The striker, who I later found out was Argentinian, did a little personal celebration, picked up the ball and, having made a miraculous recovery, duly put the penalty away himself. I felt he was way too full of himself from the start and now here he was showboating, grinning all over his face with what he’d just pulled off. I glared at him as he celebrated, anger pulsing through me.
At 2-0 the game was now almost certainly beyond us, and so it proved. My feeling remained deep anger and resentment towards this bastard and out there on the pitch I concocted a revenge fantasy. I really hoped that at some point he was going to come through on me one on one, and if he did I knew just what I'd do. I'd make no attempt to play the ball, just put my boot right through him as he went past me as hard as I could, somewhere around the knee area where it really hurts. This would no doubt be a red card but that would be immaterial. And as he was writhing in (hopefully) genuine agony on the ground, I would walk up to him, bend down and say calmly “Now THAT, you cheating little cunt, is a penalty”.
I wanted that so much it hurt. I was so seething from the injustice of it and I could think of nothing else but exacting appropriate revenge. It’s been 20 years since that day now but the incident is still fresh in my mind and whenever I reflect on it I feel the same violent reactive feelings bubbling away not too deeply inside. The injustice was just so egregious. And what I was feeling was righteous anger, after all, right?
However, in the light of Maradona‘s passing and his legacy I'm now taking another look. Do two wrongs ever really make a right? No, of course not, they never do. As a result everyone loses. If one of the England defenders had inflicted similar revenge on Diego that day, cynically taking him out at the next opportunity with a stiff boot, studs up, around the knee area and maybe put him out of action for the rest of the tournament, how would that have been viewed? It would no doubt have been applauded by England fans but how about the wider audience, those with no dog in the fight? Or, in the worse case scenario, what if it had caused permanent damage to probably the world's greatest and most popular player of the time or maybe even, God forbid, ended his career? What would the historical fallout from that have been then?
As an aside, I must say I've always wondered why one of the England defenders didn’t take him down that day, even in less cynical fashion, during that dazzling mazy run from halfway out on the far touchline that culminated in that famous second goal. That’s not to take anything away from the sheer brilliance he showed in netting that. Maybe it was simply because they were all nonplussed, still reeling from the Hand of God moment just minutes earlier. Or was this the good old British 'sense of fair play and honour in sport' in action? For surely any other defence in the world would have cleaned him out way before he was within striking distance of the net.
The second incident I was inspired to recall was again from my football past. This happened when I was very young and raw, just 16, playing Welsh League football for Barry Town in the mid 70s. I played the best part of two seasons in that team and this incident occurred within the first couple of months.. The previous season I’d been playing local league Under-16s football so to find myself suddenly thrust into Welsh League was a steep learning curve and it was proving quite a difficult transition for me, not because of the level of football so much as the edgy, 'no nonsense' culture around it. South Wales is by definition a hard place, an industrial (soon to be post-industrial) working class heartland, and that league had more than its share of hard-nut characters. It remains by far the most cynical football I ever played and seriously warped the notion of football as 'the beautiful game'. I can’t say I ever really got used to it or indeed ever really enjoyed it.
That day we were playing away against Merthyr Tydfil at Penydarren Park and late in the first half something happened that I will never forget. We'd been second best but were somehow 1-0 up, but since the goal we'd been under quite a bit of pressure and it was all hands to the pump. The ball had been flying dangerously around our box when suddenly a snapshot came in that almost at once deflected off one of our defenders, sending it the other way. I had already shifted my weight though and was wrongfooted, but it looped up quite high and I realised, perhaps a bit late, that I could maybe just get there. I shot along my goal line only to see the ball come back off the post and cross the goal line. Utilising my momentum though I dived full length and scooped it out from fully a foot, maybe even two, behind the line. As I did so I flung my feet up into the air for some reason, perhaps to cover my dodgy actions and make it look more 'last ditch'. The whole thing happened so quickly that it would’ve been very difficult for the officials to see if the ball had crossed the line or not, but their striker, a rather scary, slightly mad-looking ginger-bearded, fuzzy-haired and head-banded bruiser with a couple of teeth missing, was in no doubt. He and one of our defenders had quickly followed up the looping ball and as our defender booted it safely away for a throw in near the corner flag, he immediately stopped and loudly appealed the goal.
The referee however was unsure and after a bit of deliberation went over to talk to his linesman. The upshot, a full minute later, was 'no goal'. I was frankly amazed. The ball was so far over the line it wasn't funny, and unbelievably it hadn't been given. The ginger striker was incensed and at once started mouthing off, pointing accusingly at me as Merthyr took their throw in. The move came to nothing and resulted in a goal-kick, and as I placed the ball on the 6-yard line to take it he came right up and angrily confronted me. He was livid and called me ‘a cheating little cunt’ (hence my choice of phrase for the Argentinian). As a callow 16-year-old I was totally freaked out. Even so, despite my heart suddenly beating madly out of my chest, I nervously stood my ground. He was not far off my height, 6'2, but much more heavily built with bulging Poppeye-like tattoed forearms I remember and he brought his face very close to mine in open and aggressive confrontation. I swear I could smell whiskey on his breath. After a very nervy what was probably only a couple of seconds, our biggest defender suddenly came barging in between us, but not before he had given me a hefty shove in the chest with both hands that semi-winded me. This earned him a yellow card from the ref and a bellowing at from our captain, who’d sprinted back from midfield to join in the affray. The guy was anything but assuaged though and continued glowering at me menacingly and muttering ominously under his breath for the last few minutes of the half.
When the half time whistle blew there was a bit of argy bargy (pun intended). Voices were raised and tempers flared as the recriminations started. Some of the Merthyr players confronted the ref and the ginger guy was up to his tricks again, trying to make his way in my direction, but was held in check quite a safe distance away by two of his team mates, a couple of the 'minders' in our team looking on monitoring the situation too. He persisted though, repeatedly shouting what he'd called me at the time across the cackle of players between us and generally getting out of order until the ref threatened him with a second yellow. His team mates then physically grabbed him, and pulling him away from the fray marched him off towards the tunnel. Actually I was wary of the ref too as we walked off. Nothing happened but with all the hubbub going on I was afraid he would come over and ask me straight if it went in or not and I didn't know what I would say if he did. He was pretty much preoccupied with protestations from their players but I decided to give him a wide berth anyway. The worst thing was I felt like all attention was on me, not only from the players but from the home supporters too, who now gathered at the tunnel area to hurl abuse at us as we left the field. It was a nervy walk in to say the least.
Once in the safety of the dressing room, our manager, who I was never that comfortable with and whose name I can’t recall anymore, made a beeline for me asked me if the ball had gone in or not. There was always a level of latent (and sometimes not so latent) anger with him. He was the antithesis of the old 'arm around the shoulder’ type. Had he not been it would have certainly made me feel much more comfortable and accepted, but instead he was much more of the 'you’d better fucking perform and not fuck up or you’re going to make me really fucking angry' school of man management. Everyone else seemed on the level with him but I found him quite intimidating and I was glad when he stepped down a couple months later. When I told him 'yes, by a mile', he broke into a massive devious grin. He ruffled my hair and brought both his hands to my cheeks in a rough cradling, ending by half-slapping both my cheeks to show his approval. It didn’t help much.
Several of my team mates had expressed their approval to me too as we got in, and while there was almost relief that I'd managed to please the boss and now had points on the board with him, overriding everything was the weirdest sense of unease in the pit of my stomach. It was the strangest feeling and it kept getting stranger. It wasn't really that I’d done something bad, yet for some reason, despite the ebulliant mood amongst our team as a result, I was far from able to feel okay about what had just happened. I felt vulnerable and exposed, and probably a little guilty, and I didn't have a clue how to process it all. I was yet to feel any real affinity with anyone in that dressing room and now I was basically out of my depth and didn't want to be there - 'Beam me up, Scotty'. Looking back on it years later it's easier to see why. Despite what our team thought, when viewed objectively I had been 'a naughty boy' and I'd been caught. Just across the narrow corridor there was a bunch of mad as hell Merthyr players feeling very hard done by. Just like the ball I had crossed a line and I might just be about to pay for it. The truth was I was scared shitless.
I found myself wondering what that striker might try and do to me in the second half if he got the chance. They'd been better than us in the first half so there was every chance we'd meet at close quarters a few times in the second. I remember well the trepidation I felt going back out onto that field, and the boos that greeted us as we did so. As it turned out though the second-half was a relatively quiet affair. Our brawniest minder, a mid 30s strapping ex-soldier, was now switched from midfield to sweeper, maybe to protect me, who knows, I was never in on that if that's what happened, but he shepherded things very well and in the end we ran out quite easy 3-1 winners. The crowd, a bit of a ‘man and his dog’ kind of crowd it must be said but a crowd nonetheless, weren't letting go of it though. There were boos and some angry shouts of abuse directed at me throughout the rest of the game and again at the final whistle as we went off.
After the game in the concourse between the dressing rooms I walked by the referee explaining his decision to an obviously aggrieved Merthyr contingent. “Look, I can’t give what I can’t see” were the words I heard him repeat over and over. As we changed I must say my mind turned to possible recriminations outside as we were leaving the ground. There aren’t many rougher places in South Wales than Merthyr, though it has to be said Barry could very likely rival it. We certainly had some likely lads in our ranks who would be only too happy to step up should push come to more than shove, but as it was it was fine. Soon I was sitting snugly in the back of a car zipping down the A470 on the way home, mightily relieved to be safe and out of there.
There was no chat from them about the incident on the way home, I remember being a little surprised about that. It only came up once, when I brought up myself about me feeling I wanted to avoid the ref going in at half time. They listened to my story then after a short pause the guy driving said, "You know what you say if the ref asks you if the ball crossed the line or not, don't you..?" leaving his question hanging. At length I bit and said "..What?". After another short pause, expectation of a punch line now hanging in the air, he said " You say.. 'No fucking way, ref!' hahaha..", and they all burst out laughing. I didn't know whether to laugh along or at least pretend to, I had the distinct sense I was the butt of their joke. One of them playfully ruffled my hair, their chuckles died down and the conversation instantly turned to something else nothing to do with the game or football in general.
Looking back now, among our team what happened was probably only a big deal for me. The other players were mostly all savvy veterans, for whom something like that was likely not that big a deal at all, just something that had happened in the game that we'd been fortunate to get away with and certainly not anything to dwell on.
I was never proud of that moment though. If truth be told I was ashamed and embarassed by it and I never told the story whenever football stuff came up in conversation, at the time or since really. I've never forgotten the fact I'd done it though and the feelings it had engendered, yet despite this I was nevertheless very quick to roundly condemn Maradona for his Hand of God stunt. I'd never really rationalised it till now but it was as if my 'little cheating' was somehow not anything like as bad as his 'big cheating', I guess because of just that, mine was miniscule in comparison. I'm well aware now of the obvious dichotomy not to mention hypocracy here.
So given those two experiences and my new reflections upon my reactions in the wake of his death, who am I to criticise him for what he did against England in Mexico in 1986? People have been calling him a ‘flawed genius’ and emphasizing the ‘flawed’ bit. And he probably was. As I say though, I know very little of the details of his life so I’m loathe to comment on that side of things, I’m just sticking to football.
So does being a ‘flawed genius’ then forgive transgressions of basic human decency and give legitimacy to flouting basic commonly accepted standards of behavior? Is there really such a thing as decency in football anyway? I like to think there is, though I know I'm in the minority there. I remember Paolo DiCanio once though, when he had a chance to score catching the ball to halt play because of his concern for an opponent who was down injured on the field. The football world roundly applauded that, and rightly so. There have been many other such cases too, from which I take solace.
So as for myself, what exactly should I have done in Merthyr that day, follow the referee up and say ‘actually ref I cheated, the ball did cross the line’? No doubt my team mates and particularly my anger management case manager would’ve been delighted if I had, they’d have unceremoniously kicked my ass all the way back home to Barry I'm sure. But then, DiCanio’s manager too was critical of him at the time I remember, and I bet the fans were too. It was the media that mainly led his exoneration and fans of the game in general joined in the chorus. To be honest though, it never occurred to me to do that, to own up. What I had done was act out of pure instinct in the moment, and suddenly there we were with a real kerfuffle going on, tempers flaring and things really getting scarily out of hand all because of something I'd done. I just knew then to keep my head down. I’m sure Diego didn’t think about what he did either, he just did it. And in the aftermath, really, what are you going to do? The fallout from my little incident was intense enough, I can't begin to imagine what it must've been like for him.
I think I’m right in saying this, but Maradona was voted 'Man Of The Year' in Scotland for his action. It seems every year the Scots somehow get to vote on their ‘man of the year’, or so I was told by a Scotsman in a pub once. It could be an urban legend, I don’t know, and I don’t really care enough to go and Google it, but the fact remains he got it purely because he knocked ‘the auld enemy’ England out of the World Cup singlehandedly, pun intended, by cheating and by cheating so utterly brazenly and spectacularly.
I guess it’s the same kind of appreciation and reverence that’s reserved for ‘folk heroes’ like Robin Hood or Guy Fawkes, Ronnie Biggs. And and many another ‘working class hero’ I'm sure, the little man who gets one over on the big man and everyone, the population at large, delights. That’s certainly how Argentina saw the whole Hand of God thing and I for one am now happy to let them have it.
Maybe it’s a sad reflection on humanity that the need for revenge, ‘an eye for an eye’, which Gandhi once proferred 'makes the whole world blind', and the stout refusal to let go of real or imagined grievance is never very far below the surface. I held onto my condemnation of him for 35 years and delighted when England beat Argentina 1-0 in the World Cup here in Japan in 2002. Standing in a throng of thousands of delirious England fans (one of which I am most definitely not) waiting to exit the stadium in Sapporo, the chant was 'You can shove the Hand of God up your Arse!' (to the tune of 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain'), there was a sense of a grievous wrong at least partially avenged.
But for now, Diego, I salute you. I will no longer judge you on that one action alone and label you unqualifyingly as a ‘cheat’. There was obviously so much more to you than that and I will now try and accept and see see your life in a broader context. Certainly for the amazing, perhaps unrivaled footballer you were, but not just for that, also as the amazing personality you so obviously must have been to be so loved by millions and millions of people, not only in your own country and the places where you strutted your stuff but all around the world.
Three days, no less, of mourning begins today in Argentina. I too humbly light a candle for you.