L
ike lots of you, no doubt,
I recently went back and
watched footage of Diego
Maradona in his pomp.
Against England in 1986. In
the final against West Germany. For
Napoli when he was dragging an
also-ran team to two league titles.
And I realised that this remarkable
player, and flawed character, had
dimensions of sporting greatness that
I never before fully grasped.
Let me start by suggesting that
greatness in football is, in part, about
multitasking. Most players can dribble
if they have to think of nothing else.
Most players can hit a ball to a target
from 20 yards if they can direct all
their focus on that alone. Most
players can find a decent position
when defending if they have time to
think about it. The trick is being able
to do multiple things concurrently:
dribbling with one’s eyes up, so that
one knows where one’s team-mates
are, where opposition players are
moving, recognising the constraints
and opportunities and making all
these calculations in real time, a
monitoring task of vast complexity.
Isn’t this the commonality that
unites the finest players, even when
they possess otherwise disparate
skills? When you watch Lionel MessiBut my point is a little different.
For have you noticed how Maradona
was often able to stay on his feet
despite the close attention of
defenders, the way he would ride
challenges, the knack by which he
used the momentum of an opponent’s
body to confer momentum on his
own? Did you notice the way he
leveraged challenges, like a jiu-jitsu
fighter — a martial art defined as
“manipulating the opponent’s force
against themselves”.
When Maradona was playing there
was little protection from referees.
The only way to get past defenders
was not only to outwit them withyour feet but with your body too.
I am not sure that any player was
as skilled in this department as
Maradona. No player has so
exquisitely combined the art of
conventional football with that of
classical wrestling: low centre of
gravity, strong limbs, Machiavellian
mind. He read and rode the bumps
and whacks like an experienced
boxer in the clinch, a human Weeble
(remember those?) who almost
never fell down.
I wonder, too, if there is something
in his background that conferred this
genius. He grew up in Villa Fiorito, a
shanty town on the southern outskirtsSport
Maradona loved
contact - he was
the Weeble who
never fell down
or Cristiano Ronaldo, you are struck
not only by the magic in their feet but
the keenness in their minds. A couple
of scientists once asked a player to
cross the ball to Ronaldo on an
indoor pitch, but turned the light off a
few milliseconds after the ball was
struck. This meant that Ronaldo had
to head a ball that he couldn’t see.
Such was his “reading” of the shape
of his team-mate and the early
trajectory of the ball that it didn’t
matter. He caught the ball flush with
his forehead almost every time.
But this is merely a part of what
sets the great players apart.
Whenever I watch Kevin De Bruyne,
I can’t help noticing the role of his
neck. While he is trapping the ball
from an incoming pass, his head is
moving left and right, like an owl on
acid, building such a comprehensive
360-degree picture of the state of
play that he already knows what
he is going to do next. He is quick
not because of unusually fast-twitch
muscle fibres but because he is
playing the game one frame
ahead of his opponents.
This brings me to Maradona.
For he possessed an additional facet
of genius, one that only struck me
while rewatching his matches over
recent days. Yes, he was courageous.
He was kicked and pulled in almost
every game he played, often in
gratuitous ways. Many were the times
when he left the pitch with stud
marks on his ankles or scratch marks
on his neck. It took indomitability
to absorb those knocks (George Best
was of a similar ilk) and get back
up for more.of Buenos Aires, densely packed with
bodies, and when he started playing
football he did so in often
claustrophobic spaces. What better
way to elaborate his understanding of
both the geometry of the ball and the
geometry of human contact.
Forgive a bit of speculation, but
don’t we see this quality in many
“street footballers”? Wayne Rooney
was another who loved the physical
aspects of the game – and knew how
to make them work for him. The
same is true of Luis Suárez and Sergio
Agüero. When talented youngsters
learn to play on large, manicured
pitches, perhaps they are not as
familiar with this part of the game.
Certainly, when people compare
a dribble by Messi with one by
Maradona, they are not comparing
like with like. Maradona had to
deal with infringements that are
now largely outlawed while
simultaneously exhibiting all the
other skills that matter in elite
football — a rarefied form of
multitasking. This is not to diminish
the bravery of Messi or ignore the
nasty challenges that he has endured.
It is merely to acknowledge that the
game has changed.
I know that many readers will
never forgive Maradona for the
cheating incident against England
and the failure of a drugs test, not to
mention a litany of other abuses that
readily spring to mind. I happen to
agree with those who dispute that he
was led astray by the Camorra, the
Italian mafia group who sunk their
claws into him after his move to
Napoli in 1984. It is quite clear that
his capacity for self-destruction
predated his transfer from Barcelona.
But I can’t see why it is
contradictory to acknowledge the
flawed character while still
acknowledging his qualities as a
footballer. He was in the top rank of
sportsmen, a diminutive genius who
combined fierceness with finesse.
Above all, though, he was a
multitasker par excellence.
As Jorge Valdano put it: “Diego
apologised to me after he scored the
second goal against England [in the
1986 World Cup]. He could see me
unmarked at the far post but he
couldn’t find a gap to get the ball to
me. I felt offended. It was an insult to
my profession. I mean, even on a run
like that he still has the time to look
up and see me... He was incredible.”Matthew Syedyed
Maradona, seen here against South Korea during the 1986 World Cup, used
the physical battles of the game to his advantage, rather like a martial artistDAVID CANNON/GETTY IMAGES60 1GM Wednesday December 2 2020 | the times