Remembering Diego Maradona, Argentina’s most famous soccer player
Lesson summary
Hi there, welcome back to another Plain English lesson. This time, it’s number 321, so you can see the full lesson online at PlainEnglish.com/321. JR, the producer, posted it up there like always—all five parts. There are five parts to each lesson and JR puts them all up there at about 6 am local time every Monday and Thursday for three years now. That’s dedication.
Coming up today: Diego Maradona, a soccer player who scored one of the most famous goals in World Cup history, has died. Like Monday’s lesson about Beethoven, this will be about an outsized figure that had his ups and downs in life. The phrasal verb is “catch up with”—and if you think you know what that means…keep listening because the way I describe it might be different from the way you’ve heard it before.
Death of soccer legend Diego Maradona
If you ask an Argentine of a certain age who is the best soccer player in history, the answer is likely to be Diego Maradona. The superstar who died on November 25 this year scored two of the most famous goals in World Cup history, starred in European football leagues, and coached internationally after his retirement as a player. In his club career, he scored 259 goals in just 491 matches: more than one goal for every two games, a remarkable achievement in a low-scoring sport.
Maradona received his first soccer ball as a gift when he was just three years old, and he quickly became devoted to the game that would make him a global icon. When he was just eight years old, he was spotted by a talent scout while playing soccer for his neighborhood club.
Ten days before his 16th birthday, Maradona made his professional debut for the Argentinos Juniors in Buenos Aires, becoming the youngest player in the club’s history. He spent five years playing for the Argentinos Juniors before transferring to Buenos Aires’s famous Boca Juniors. Maradona found success at his childhood favorite team, winning the league title during his first season with the Boca Juniors. In professional soccer, club teams can trade, or transfer, players and the acquiring team usually pays a fee for the privilege. New clubs are willing to pay a premium to acquire the best players. After a few years with the Boca Juniors, Barcelona paid a then-world record 5 million-euro transfer fee. Just a few years later, Napoli, in Naples, Italy, would acquire Maradona, breaking the transfer-fee record again.
It was a good investment. Maradona reached the peak of his professional career while playing for Napoli in the 1980s. As captain, Maradona elevated the team to the most successful era in its history; he led the team to its first league title in 1987.
In soccer, players have professional contracts in national or regional leagues, but they also play for their home countries’ national teams in international tournaments like the World Cup. In this way, the world’s best players can make their fortunes in the most competitive leagues, while still engendering pride in their home countries’ fans.
Maradona’s career with the Argentine national team involved several World Cup appearances. His first World Cup was in 1982, but his most memorable performance came in 1986 in Mexico City. It was there that he scored two of the most memorable goals in World Cup history: both goals in his team’s 2-1 quarterfinal victory over England. He scored the first goal with his hand—an illegal play that escaped the referees’ notice in the days before video replay. That goal is now remembered in Argentina as the “Hand of God” goal (though they might remember it differently in England).
His next goal was legal, but no less astounding. He got the ball in his own half of the field, dribbled past five England defenders, reached the opposite end, fooled the opposing goaltender, and scored his team’s winning goal. It was later voted the by FIFA as the best goal in World Cup history.
His glittering career, though, was marked with controversy off the field. Shortly after he arrived in Naples, he fell into alcoholism and drug addiction, even as he was dominating on the field. Maradona began to use cocaine and miss games and practices—being fined for each absence. Maradona himself admitted that every week he would binge on drugs and alcohol from Sunday until Wednesday. On Thursday, he would start an intense detox to clear his system and be prepared for the weekend’s match.
In 1991, his lifestyle caught up with him: he tested positive for cocaine and was banned from soccer for 15 months; later that year, he was charged with drug trafficking.
He returned, but that would not be his last brush with drug-related controversy. Maradona failed a drug test during the 1994 World Cup and was removed from the tournament: he was banned for another 15 months. It would be his last game in international play and Argentina lost to Romania in an early round without him.
In 2008, he found his way back to soccer, as the coach of the Argentine national team, which he led to the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup. Unable to agree to a contract extension with his own country’s national team, he went on to coach in the United Arab Emirates, Belarus, and Mexico before retiring for good.
Maradona’s personal life was also plagued with conflict—paternity controversies, estrangement from his family, allegations of domestic violence. Fed up with intrusive journalists, he once shot at them with an air rifle.
And so his death, too, has been controversial. Weeks before he died, Maradona was admitted to a hospital for psychological reasons. The next day, he had emergency brain surgery to alleviate bleeding in his brain. He was released from the hospital, but died suddenly on November 25, at his home, after having refused additional treatment for alcoholism.
Argentine authorities have raided the homes of his doctor and psychiatrist, investigating Maradona’s death at the request of his family. His surgeon, through tears at a news conference, said he loved Maradona, but that the soccer star was an “unmanageable” patient.
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez declared three days of mourning to honor the soccer legend. Maradona’s body lay in state in the Casa Rosada. His coffin was draped in Argentina’s national flag and three number 10 jerseys.
Worldwide fans
What a life. I opened the lesson by saying, if you ask an Argentine of a certain age…but in truth, soccer fans around the world might give the same answer—especially in Naples and even, even, in arch-rival Brazil.
We have a lot of listeners in Argentina, so if you’d like to share any news from your perspective, please do so in our free Facebook group just for listeners of Plain English. You can always access that at PlainEnglish.com/Facebook.
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