Diego Maradona, Argentine soccer legend, dies at 60

A mop-haired boy from a Buenos Aires slum, Diego Armando Maradona dribbled and dazzled his way to world fame, becoming one of the greatest soccer players of all time and achieving a godlike status in his homeland when he led Argentina to victory in the 1986 World Cup.

But he also was one of the most self-destructive, a volatile man of prodigious appetites whose excesses landed him in the hospital again and again.

Never far from the spotlight he chased with such fury, Maradona died Wednesday of a heart attack, the Associated Press confirmed. He was 60.

Maradona had been plagued by health issues in recent years, and was recently released from a Buenos Aires hospital after suffering a subdural hematoma, which required brain surgery.

As the news of Maradona’s death circulated around the world Wednesday, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez called for three days of national mourning, while UEFA, soccer’s governing body in Europe, announced there would be a minute of silence before its Champions League and Europa League games this week.

Soccer stars past and present took to social media to say goodbye.

Pelé, the Brazilian legend and perhaps the greatest player of all time, wrote on Twitter that he has “lost a great friend and the world lost a legend. … One day, I hope we can play ball together in the sky.”

Cristiano Ronaldo, the five-time world player of the year from Portugal who currently stars for Italy’s Juventus, tweeted, “Today I say goodbye to a friend and the world says goodbye to an eternal genius.”.

Like that other famous Argentine export, the tango, Maradona brought flair, passion and an undeniable sense of darkness to his sport and his life. On the field, few could match his artistry, skill and creativity.

Diego Maradona flashes victory signs to fans after meeting with Argentine President Alberto Fernandez on Dec. 26, 2019.

(Associated Press)

During a professional career that began on a Buenos Aires field when he was 15, Maradona scored hundreds of goals, many of them the stuff of legend, including two in a single match against England in the 1986 World Cup. The first is considered by many the most notorious goal in the history of the sport, and the second among the most celebrated.

He went on to lead Argentina’s national team to the World Cup title in that tournament, the summit of his career. But drug abuse and other acts of self-destruction tainted his final years as a player and he retired in 1997, just a whisper of his former self.

Maradona played 91 games for the Argentine national team and was a star for teams in Italy and Spain. He played his last World Cup game in Foxboro, Mass., in 1994, escorted off the field for a drug test he would fail.

One of eight children of a laborer who had migrated to the city from rural Corrientes province, Maradona was born Oct. 30, 1960, in a villa miseria, or slum, in the suburban Buenos Aires community of Villa Fiorito. The family lived in abject poverty.

In his autobiography, “I Am El Diego,” he recalled walking to school kicking a ball along streets, up stairs and along railroad tracks. He spent hours playing pickup games in a nearby horse pasture.

When he was 9, a friend invited him to a tryout at the Argentinos Juniors, an adult professional soccer team. He impressed enough to earn a spot on the Cebollitas, or Little Onions, a feeder club for the team.

The Little Onions would go on to win 136 games without defeat, with young Maradona often scoring three or more goals a game.

By the time he was 12, he was working at professional games as a ball boy, becoming a favorite of the crowds for his halftime juggling skills. A television variety show invited him to show off his talents, and in soccer-mad Argentina he became a minor celebrity.

Just a few days before his 16th birthday, the coach of Argentinos Juniors brought him onto the first team. He first stepped onto the field as a substitute, with the coach telling him, “Go, Diego, and play like you know how to play. And if you can, dribble through someone’s legs.” Minutes later, the young Maradona did just that.

“That day,” he said later in his autobiography, “I felt like I touched heaven with my hands.”

Leading Argentine teams began a bidding war for his services. He moved his family out of Villa Fiorito to an apartment. Eventually, he joined the famed Boca Juniors team.

He was first named to Argentina’s national team in 1977, when he was 16. But coach Cesar Luis Menotti failed to name him to the squad that won the 1978 World Cup, which Argentina hosted. Maradona was crushed.

“I knew he was a great player, who was going to have the chance to play in many more World Cups,” Menotti would say years afterward.

In 1982, after leading Boca Juniors to a league championship, Maradona signed with the Spanish club Barcelona. It was there, friends say, that he got his first taste of cocaine.

“I was, I am now, and I have always been a drug addict,” he would acknowledge years later.

But on the field, his powers only seemed to grow. After fighting repeatedly with Barcelona management, he moved to the Italian club Napoli, scoring a series of remarkable goals that quickly endeared him to the notoriously fickle Italian fans.

In the 1986 World Cup, played in Mexico, the full range of his skills was on display. During the tournament he scored five goals in leading Argentina to its second World Cup victory, but he will always be remembered for the two he scored in a quarterfinal match against England. Passions were high for the game, played just four years after Britain defeated Argentina in the Falklands War.

With the game scoreless, Maradona rose up and challenged the English goalkeeper Peter Shilton for a high pass. Maradona punched the ball with his fist into the goal, a blatant violation of the rules seen by nearly everyone on the field but the referee.

Asked afterward if he had used his hand, Maradona said the goal had been scored “by the hand of God.”

×

Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God’ goal against England in the 1986 World Cup championship game.

Five minutes later, Maradona scored another, the decisive goal in what would be a 2-1 victory over England. Taking the ball in his own half of the field, he dribbled and weaved past most of the English team, then tumbled to the ground as he fired a shot that beat Shilton. In a poll conducted two decades later by soccer’s international governing body, FIFA, it was selected the greatest goal in the history of the World Cup.

“Today he scored one of the most brilliant goals you will ever see,” English coach Bobby Robson said after the game. “The first goal was dubious. The second goal was a miracle.”

Maradona recalled in his autobiography: “It was as if we had beaten a country, more than just a soccer team.”

A week later, when Argentina defeated West Germany 3-2 in the championship game, he stormed off the field and into the locker room shouting obscenities; for Maradona, victory was always tinged with the lingering anger he felt for his rivals and detractors.

Still at the peak of his powers, he inspired Napoli to its first Italian league titles in 1987 and 1990. He married childhood sweetheart Claudia Villafañe in 1989, but would admit later to being unfaithful to her. In 1991 he was suspended for 15 months after testing positive for cocaine.

Noticeably overweight, he went on a crash diet before the 1994 World Cup, hosted by the United States. But after scoring two goals in three games, he failed a drug test for ephedrine, a performance-enhancing drug. He was kicked out of the World Cup and banned from the sport for 15 months.

“My soul is broken,” Maradona said. But he blamed FIFA officials more than himself. “They cut my legs out from me just as I was trying to come back.”

Maradona eventually returned to play for his old Argentine club team, Boca Juniors, where he retired in 1997.

Away from the pitch, Maradona seemed a sad, rotund figure. He traveled to Cuba to seek treatment for drug abuse in 2002 and eventually struck up a friendship with Fidel Castro. When he returned to Argentina, he sported a prominent tattoo on his arm of the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, one of Castro’s top lieutenants during the Cuban revolution.

Shortly after his 2004 divorce, Maradona began another downward spiral and was hospitalized after a drug overdose and then again for alcohol poisoning. His family had him hospitalized in a psychiatric facility after he threatened to leave the intensive care unit where he had been receiving treatment. He was released but returned a few days later after a bout of overeating. His death seemed so imminent that daily newspapers in Buenos Aires prepared special sections to run with his obituary.

But after a few weeks he was released and went on to host a popular variety show on Argentine television, “Night With No. 10.” And throughout his career, he never seemed to forget where he came from, lending his name and profile to dozens of charitable endeavors that raised millions, mostly for children’s causes.

He coached briefly, and erratically, for two teams in the Argentine league and then, in a move that both stunned and delighted the nation, in 2008 was handed the reins of the country’s national team, which was struggling to right itself before the World Cup. The team advanced to the quarterfinals, hoping that new superstar Lionel Messi’s sublime soccer skills would overcome the confounding coaching decisions made by Maradona. He was dismissed in 2010.

In 2018, Maradona — whose gait had turned to a shuffle and once crisp voice to a mumble — was hired to coach the Dorados, a professional team based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, in the heart of drug country. The only person more famous than Maradona in Sinaloa was Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the legendary drug kingpin.

“Taking Maradona to Sinaloa is like taking a kid to Disneyland,” sportswriter Rafael Martinez wrote on Twitter.

Diego Maradona yells instructions while coaching Argentina during a World Cup game against Mexico on June 27, 2010.

(Martin Meissner / Associated Press)

But Maradona, silencing critics again, made it work. Hobbled by knee injuries and using a cane as he shuffled about, Maradona managed to take a young team buried deep in Mexico’s second division to the playoff final, where it lost by a goal in overtime.

“He is very happy, very satisfied with his work,” said Fox Deportes analyst Daniel Brailovsky, a former teammate. “It’s his passion, it’s his life. It’s everything for him.

“Maradona can’t live without football, and football can’t live without Maradona.”

Six months later he left Mexico, quickly resurfacing in Argentina as manager for the Gimnasia de la Plata club.

His cinematic life was captured in the 2019 HBO documentary “Diego Maradona,” with filmmaker Asif Kapadia combing through 500 hours of never-before-seen footage. The result portrays Maradona as he was: a man both tortured and talented, a superhero, antihero and villain who was brilliantly gifted on the field and maddeningly troubled away from it.

“Maradona is the synthesis of Argentina,” suggested Guillermo Oliveta, president of the Argentina Marketing Assn. “He came from dire poverty and went up so quickly in social status. And then he crashed, just like the country.”

Tobar is a former Times staff writer. Times staff writers Kevin Baxter and Steve Marble contributed to this report.

1/25

Kobe Bryant, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sean Connery and more.  (Los Angeles Times)

2/25

Rafer Johnson, winner of the 1960 Olympic decathlon gold medal, was a man whose legacy was interwoven with Los Angeles history, beginning with his performances as a world-class athlete at UCLA and punctuated by the night in 1968 when he helped disarm Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin at the Ambassador Hotel. Johnson lit the Olympic flame at the opening of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. He was 86.
  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

3/25

With his quick wit and easy smile, Alex Trebek drove the game show “Jeopardy!” up the ratings charts and became a welcome television host in America’s living rooms. As the quiz show rolled through the decades, Trebek remained a comfortable fit — in a 2014 Reader’s Digest poll, Trebek ranked as the eighth-most trusted person in the United States, right behind Bill Gates and 51 spots above Oprah Winfrey. He was 80.
  (Los Angeles Times)

4/25

Guitarist Eddie Van Halen’s speed and innovations along the fretboard inspired a generation of imitators as the band bearing his name rose to MTV stardom and multiplatinum sales over 10 consecutive albums. The streak made Van Halen one of the most successful bands in rock history, including two albums that reached diamond status (10 million copies sold): 1978’s debut “Van Halen” and 1984’s “1984.” He was 65.  (Wibbitz/Getty)

5/25

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg championed women’s rights — first as a trailblazing civil rights attorney who methodically chipped away at discriminatory practices, then as the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and finally as an unlikely pop culture icon. A feminist hero dubbed Notorious RBG, Ginsburg became the leading voice of the court’s liberal wing, best known for her stinging dissents on a bench that mostly skewed right since her 1993 appointment. She was 87.
  (Kiichiro Sato / Associated Press)

6/25

Chadwick Boseman’s breakout role was playing Dodger Jackie Robinson in the 2013 sports biopic “42.” The next year, he made an electrifying lead turn as James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, in “Get on Up.” Then came the role that would change his career: As Black Panther, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first Black superhero, Boseman became the face of Wakanda to millions of fans around the world and helped usher in a new and inclusive era of superhero blockbusters. He was 43.
  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

7/25

Sumner Redstone outmaneuvered rivals to assemble one of America’s leading entertainment companies, now called ViacomCBS, which boasts CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Showtime, the Simon & Schuster book publisher and Paramount Pictures movie studio. Unlike contemporaries Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner, Redstone was not a visionary, but rather a hard-charging lawyer and deal maker who pursued power and wealth through the accumulation of content companies. He was 97.

  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

8/25

Regis Philbin reigned for decades as the comfortable and sometimes cantankerous morning host of “Live,” first with Kathie Lee Gifford and later Kelly Ripa, above. He earned Emmy nominations by the armful, hosted New Year’s Eve specials, rode in parades, set a record for the most face-time hours on television and helped reinvigorate prime-time game shows with “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” He was 88.
  (Charles Sykes / Associated Press)

9/25

Rep. John Lewis famously shed his blood at the foot of a Selma, Ala., bridge in a 1965 demonstration for Black voting rights, and went on to become a 17-term Democratic member of Congress. An inspirational figure for decades, Lewis was one of the last survivors among members of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner circle. He was 80.
  (Mark Humphrey / Associated Press)

10/25

Country music firebrand and fiddler Charlie Daniels started out as a session musician, which included playing on Bob Dylan’s 1969 album “Nashville Skyline,” and beginning in the early 1970s toured endlessly with his own band, sometimes doing 250 shows a year. In 1979, Daniels had a crossover smash with “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which topped the country chart, hit No. 3 on the pop chart and was voted single of the year by the Country Music Assn. He was 83.  (Rick Diamond / Getty Images for IEBA)

11/25

Carl Reiner first came to national attention in the 1950s on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” where he wrote alongside Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and other comedy legends. He later created “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” one of TV’s most fondly remembered sitcoms, and directed hit films including “The Comic” (1969), starring Van Dyke; “Where’s Poppa?” (1970), starring George Segal and Ruth Gordon; “Oh, God!” starring George Burns and John Denver; and four films starring Steve Martin. He was 98.   (Associated Press )

12/25

The flamboyant, piano-pounding Little Richard roared into the rock ‘n’ roll spotlight in the 1950s with hits such as “Tutti-Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” The Georgia native’s raucous sound fused gospel
fervor and R&B sexuality, profoundly influencing the Beatles, James Brown (who succeeded him in one of his early bands), Jimi Hendrix (one of his backup musicians in the mid-’60s) and Bruce Springsteen. He was 87.
  (Boris Yaro / Los Angeles Times)

13/25

Don Shula was the NFL’s winningest coach, leading the 1972 Miami Dolphins to the league’s only undefeated season. He coached the Baltimore Colts to one Super Bowl and the Dolphins to five, winning Lombardi Trophies after the 1972 and ’73 seasons. He was 90.
  (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

14/25

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak crushed dissent for decades until the 2011 Arab Spring movement drove him from power. During his presidency, which spanned nearly 30 years, he protected Egypt’s stability as intifadas roiled Israel and the Palestinian territories, the U.S. led two wars against Iraq, Iran fomented militant Shiite Islam across the region and global terrorism complicated the divide between East and West. He was 91.  (Sameh Sherif / AFP/Getty Images)

15/25

Among his 40-odd films, burly Brian Dennehy played a sheriff who jailed Rambo in “First Blood,” a serial killer in “To Catch a Killer” and a corrupt sheriff in “Silverado.” On Broadway, he was awarded Tonys for his roles in “Death of a Salesman” (1999) and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (2003). He was 81.  (Dia Dipasupil)

16/25

Singer-songwriter John Prine broke onto the folk scene in 1971 with a self-titled album that included two songs brought to broader audiences by Bette Midler and Bonnie Raitt: “Hello in There” and “Angel From Montgomery,” respectively. In 2019, he was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was 73.  (Frazer Harrison / Getty Images for Stagecoach)

17/25

Country singer Kenny Rogers racked up an impressive string of hits — initially as a member of The First Edition starting in the late 1960s and later as a solo artist and duet partner with Dolly Parton — and earned three Grammy Awards, 19 nominations and a slew of accolades from country-music awards shows. Country purists balked at his syrupy ballads, but his fans packed arenas that only the titans of rock could fill. He was 81.  (Suzanne Mapes / Associated Press)

18/25

Xerox researcher Larry Tesler pioneered concepts that made computers more user-friendly, including moving text through cut, copy and paste. In 1980, he joined Apple, where he worked on the Lisa computer, the Newton personal digital assistant and the Macintosh. He was 74.  (AP)

19/25

Ski industry pioneer Dave McCoy transformed a remote Sierra peak into the storied Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. Over six decades, it grew from a downhill depot for friends to a profitable operation of 3,000 workers and 4,000 acres of ski trails and lifts, a mecca for generations of skiers and boarders. He was 104.  (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

20/25

Screen icon Kirk Douglas brought a clenched-jawed intensity to an array of heroes and heels, receiving Oscar nominations for his performances as an opportunistic movie mogul in the 1952 drama “The Bad and the Beautiful” and as Vincent van Gogh in the 1956 drama “Lust for Life.” As executive producer of “Spartacus,” Douglas helped end the Hollywood blacklist by giving writer Dalton Trumbo screen credit under his own name. He was 103.  (Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times)

21/25

“Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark became a perennial best-seller, writing or co-writing “A Stranger Is Watching,” “Daddy’s Little Girl” and more than 50 other favorites. Her sales topped 100 million copies, and many of her books, including “A Stranger is Watching” and “Lucky Day,” were adapted for movies and television. She was 92.  (Associated Press)

22/25

Fred Silverman was the head of programming at CBS, where he championed a string of hits including “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “All in the Family,” “MASH” and “The Jeffersons.” Later at ABC, he programmed “Laverne & Shirley,” “The Love Boat,” “Happy Days” and the 12-hour epic saga “Roots.” He was 82.  (Associated Press)

23/25

Former California Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark Jr. represented the East Bay in Congress for 40 years. The influential Democrat helped craft the Affordable Care Act, the signature healthcare achievement of the Obama administration, and also created the 1986 law best known as COBRA, which allows workers to stay on their employer’s health insurance plan after they leave a job. He was 88.  (Associated Press)

24/25

News anchor Jim Lehrer appeared 12 times as a presidential debate moderator and helped build “PBS NewsHour” into an authoritative voice of public broadcasting. The program, first called “The Robert MacNeil Report” and then “The MacNeil-Lehrer Report,” became the nation’s first one-hour TV news broadcast in 1983. Lehrer was 85.  (David McNew / Getty Images)

25/25

Terry Jones was a founding member of the Monty Python troupe who wrote and performed for their early ’70s TV series and films including “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in 1975 and “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” in 1979. After the Pythons largely disbanded in the 1980s, Jones wrote books on medieval and ancient history, presented documentaries, wrote poetry and directed films. He was 77.  (Associated Press)