God is Dead
The world lost a legend this week, though many would describe that clause as nothing short of blasphemy. Reflecting on the legacy of Diego Maradona.
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“I thank you for having played football, because it’s the sport that fives me the greatest joy, the most freedom, it’s like touching the sky with your hands. Thanks to the ball, thank you to football.”
I’m writing this while watching videos of Diego Maradona, and digesting a bit how his death has affected the world, including myself. Some of the videos are clips of him playing football, some are just quotes that attempt to define who he was, by some of the many millions who’ve known him over the past forty years, through the wonderful medium of being able to watch football on TV. And some by himself. Many of the quotes refer to god, and it seems difficult to express one’s sentiment about the man without reference to the religious.
Discussions of the greatest player of all time have historically been a toss-up between Pele and Maradona, and I’m lucky enough to remember the emergence of Ronaldo and Messi into world football in the mid-2000’s. Each pair a semi-final of their eras, with compelling arguments to be made for any of the four as to being the best of their time, or then the best of all time when faced in the final against a competitor from the past or future.
This week it is apparent how trite these arguments have been, and I feel it’s not just out of respect for the presently deceased. With all respect of course being offered, being “taken from the world” doesn’t even seem to do Diego’s passing justice, and it seems that in the past few days everyone has realised that there may emerge one of these four who truly was the greatest of all time. When Messi or Ronaldo pass, they will be remembered by compelling footage of their skills, their goals, charts and lists of their statistics year in, year out, numbers of trophies won and goals scored and assists and winks-per-minnute and revenue generated. Yet in the last few days, the obituaries have not just been of goals and dummies and dribbles and keepie uppies in warm-ups that drew cheers bigger than goals from crowds. So much has shown us the effect the man had on the people who knew him, who watched him, who came from the same country as him or the city of Naples which he clawed out of the shadow and placed as a viable city in the fractured politics of Italy, whom adopted him for several years.
It's clear now in watching the past few days of media coverage and commemoration of Maradona, which has only been partly highlighting his super-human skill with a football, has focused as much on that aura that surrounded him. It was not manufactured hype. It was not marketing. It was, and still is, and most likely will remain for generations, the reverence and devotion reserved for people who embody so much more than the skill they ostensibly practice or are known for. Celebrity deaths are usually met with some band of loyal devotees who feel the loss as if for a member of their own family. It’s easy to roll your eyes at what look like over-the-top expressions of grief. And cynicism is probably justified in a lot of such cases, the outpourings of people who are perhaps a bit too attached to someone they’ve never met perhaps indicating something amiss with the people they have.
Though in this case, I understand it, at least. Who am I to judge in any case? I haven’t been weeping, though I have been somewhat touched by having at least known and appreciated him while he was alive. I’m sure most football fans have. With all due sensitivity there will not be the same global response when the distant day comes for Lionel Messi. Even in Argentina they know it. And not just because he hasn’t won the World Cup. Messi is seen as more of an alien entity possessing skills that are beyond most humans, and, I daresay, a personality to match. He is not so fatally human as Maradona, who managed to be simultaneously god and the son of god.
Some opinion pieces have brought up, or even focused on, Maradona’s so-called flaws. The Hand of God, the cocaine habit, the sometimes abrasive personality. I would say that these people think too much, and think too much of themselves and their own opinions and morals. The people weeping for Maradona, or re-watching documentaries and clips on Youtube, both of his godly footballing moments and his often hilarious off-the-field behaviour and persona, know in their hearts that this was a man who embodied the absolute peak of human existence. In his talent, in his passion, in his attitude – and in his flaws. That is why the world has been touched this week, and rightly so.
In a world of individuals who have gotten high in their own way on moralising, virtue signalling to others, of condemning and cancelling – and the cliché of those people having something to hide themselves often rings true – this is a man who was uncancellable. Many tried it on the pitch – and back in the days where the hatchet job was a recognised tactic of defensive skill – and he just got up and kept on running rings around his opponents with shattered ankles on muddy pitches. And off the pitch, he remained revered until the day he died. He lifted the people of the slums of his home city and the impoverished city of Naples to greater heights than they’d ever experienced.
Some might view his life and rise as a cautionary tale, though to do so would be to miss the point. We are all flawed beings, it’s just that most of us are able to cover these things up. And yet we see political scandals every week it seems now, by so-called educated and proper rulers and elite professionals breaking rules with little disregard, backed up by pathetic apologies and claims of ‘momentary lapses of judgement’. It is arguable that if Diego Maradona had grown up in a prim and proper middle-class suburb of Dublin, he would never have been given the environment or the culture to express himself on the football pitch as he did. Or maybe he would. He could have been Messi. But nobody is going to transcend the possibilities that life has given to them by watching a phoned-in and condescending apology for misdeamours or grave infractions of the law by politicians, or from the broadcasters of the RTE News. And (again, with all due sensitivity), the world won’t grive when they leave our screens for good.
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