I’m sitting in a cheap restaurant with a one-page laminated menu by a car park in Sinaloa, Mexico, a copy of Diego Maradona’s autobiography El Diego in hand. It’s May 2019, scorching and the Argentinian photographer should be arriving soon. She usually does heavyweight stuff for quality publications and isn’t the slightest bit fazed about coming to a city on which the US has just imposed its highest, level-four “Do not travel” warning. Syria, then embroiled in civil war, also had a level four. Further US government advice was even less encouraging: “Do not travel to Sinaloa state. Violent crime is widespread. Criminal organisations are based and operating there.”
There are other worries. We’ve come to Mexico without an appointment for an interview, having repeatedly been declined. Hence the book – some more research in the unlikely event that we do meet Maradona.
“He couldn’t see a cow in a bathroom,” is one of Maradona’s great lines from El Diego, about his then agent when he was at Barcelona. An editor has added an asterisk marking details omitted in the original Spanish version, such as “*In 1994, Maradona was arrested for possession of cocaine” or “*The incident referred to here is the much publicised affair when Maradona responded to persistent door-stepping by firing an air rifle at congregated journalists”.
Space for pictures is scarce in his book, but he still finds room for nine photos from Argentina’s game against England in 1986.
This trip wasn’t my idea. The truth is, I didn’t even know he was in Mexico in 2019 and my first reaction was similar to many I told when I heard he was in Sinaloa: “What the hell is Maradona doing in the narco capital of Mexico?” It was a lazy, clichéd view. A writer in the office of FourFourTwo had told James Brown, the then editor (and, of course, former GQ editor), what Maradona was up to there. Brown, an advocate of gonzo-style journalism, in turn asked me to fly out to get stuck into the piece.
Aptly enough, I was assigned a top war photographer to accompany me, but we needed more than one story to justify the cost and we settled on Mexico’s third city of Monterrey where the city’s two football clubs were about to meet in their Continental Cup final – think Liverpool and Everton meeting in the Champions League final. Plus the Mexican equivalent of the Kardashians were going to meet me to show me around their city. That glamour was a week and a million miles away from the dreadful restaurant on the wrong side of an eight-lane highway close to the airport hotel in Sinaloa where I ended up.
Maradona’s club Dorados (where Pep Guardiola once played) had said no: no interview, sorry, he wasn’t talking to the press. End of story. We’d be welcome to come and we could speak to everyone else at the club, but not Diego.
But I went anyway, even without the interview. A flight to Paris, another flight (back over Manchester) to Mexico City and then a connection to Sinaloa on which I tried to speak to other passengers, mostly suited businessmen, to learn more about the place since there wasn’t a single word about Culiacan, a city of 785,000 people, in the 1,979 pages of The Rough Guide To Mexico.
We eventually touched down amid sun-scorched craggy mountains, which make it the ideal climate and location for growing marijuana – the plants grow to 1.5 metres. In 2015, the army discovered the largest ever Mexican marijuana planation thriving in the fertile Sinaloan soil. It was early morning and the first time I’d seen daylight since leaving Manchester 20 hours before.
At Charles de Gaulle the previous night, we’d had confirmation that there would be an open training session. Maradona would be there, but there would be no media. At least we knew where he’d be.
At the hotel, jet lag made sleep impossible. The receptionist shakes her head when asked if there is a map of the city. Her colleague says there’s nothing to really see downtown, but there’s a large modern mall with a department store called “Liverpool”. The photographer arrives and we head into town, walk around and go to the stadium ahead of the training session. There’s no evidence at all of a football team in the town and the sports shops sell the shirts of Mexican giants Puma, Chivas Guadalajara, the Mexican national side and Real Madrid. Perhaps it’s no surprise; Dorados was only founded in 2003.
The only evidence of the local football club is on the front page of the local newspaper, a pitiful amount of which are sold by an old man by a bus stop. On the front page of El Sol De Sinaloa is a picture of fans queuing under the headline “Everyone Wants A Ticket – Hundreds Of People Queue For Tickets For The Grand Final Between Dorados Of Sinaloa And Atletico San Luis”. On page 30 in the sports section, a report from the Dorados game two days previous is headlined “The Magic Of Maradona Remains Intact”.
We go to the stadium. Everyone we speak to likes Maradona, who has led his team to the playoffs for the Mexican first division. They talk of the songs sung about Maradona, say he’s done far better than they expected and that his arrival was a huge lift for a city with a negative perception. It’s clear his players love him and the team spirit is superb. Locals tell stories of Maradona going to watch the local baseball games in a city where it’s the number-one sport; of him going to a house where the street kids sleep and kissing the children one by one.
The players start to arrive for training, then Maradona appears. We can’t get close to him. He’s soon on the pitch for a three-hour-long training session. He walks with a limp and sits on an ice box as fans serenade him in song from the terraces. They want to lift the players ahead of the key game and have flags bearing Che Guevara-style images of Maradona’s face.
A man in his forties wearing a team shirt and shorts approaches. He’s the club president and talks with us for over an hour, while all the time flies bite our legs drawing blood. The president says they come from the river behind the stand and explains it will be fumigated before the big game.
He is the man who gave Maradona the job in Mexico. His son supports Newcastle United. The president is interesting and helpful. His words would be enough for a solid feature, but, with respect, it’s Maradona we really want. The president is onside and introduces us to Maradona’s girlfriend, Veronica. She’s friendly, asks where I’ve come from and suggests that Diego should talk to us. The man himself is told that we’re here, shouts “Hola” and beckons us to the pitch where he’s sitting after training. It is difficult to comprehend just how easy it all has become.
We speak in Spanish. The interview goes well, apart from a disagreement when he says, “Manchester United used to be my favourite English team for so long. So many great players and a great team under Ferguson. But now I have to say City. I know you shouldn’t change like that, but it’s because of Kun (Sergio Aguero). We speak a lot. And he plays in a very good team. You see, the thing with Pep…”
He liked Pep, his tactics.
Maradona was also intrigued by me – that I’d come from Manchester, that I was English, that I’d been to Argentina to watch and write about football. At almost every game in Argentina around many grounds on different visits, I’d heard the terrace song “If you don’t dance then you’re an Englishman”.
Maradona was smiling. He wanted to hear more. He moved closer in those pre-social distancing times and who was I to say no?
“So what do you do, Englishman?” he asks me.
“Pretend that I’m from Ireland. Dublin,” I tell him. He laughs loudly and I show him some photos on my phone, which he loves. Photos from San Lorenzo, where the structure of the terrace moves as fans bounce on it; from Boca, Banfield, Racing or River. I love Argentinian fan culture and the world-beating atmosphere inside their stadiums.
The Falklands issue remained prominent in Argentina. The previous year, I’d been at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium – home of Argentinos Juniors, Maradona’s first club – for a league game in the western suburbs of the sprawling Argentine capital. Falklands veterans had taken to the field at halftime to a roar as loud as the goals. Huge banners with Argentina’s flag superimposed on the islands proliferated. The journalist in me wanted to go and speak to the veterans there and then. My dad’s mate had been in 45 Commando and attacked them at Mount Kent before the fall of Stanley, not that he liked to speak about it. He’d seen too much “and it’s still there somewhere deep in my mind”.
I’d love to write an article with the Argentinian veterans who were footballers as well as conscripts. Some survived the war and became top-flight footballers. Maradona had played with them, before and after he moved to Europe in 1982, the year of the war, but that was not something to get on to sitting down after a training session.
The interview was full of surprises. Who knew that Maradona rated Graeme Souness so highly? Or Bryan Robson? El Diego was warm, genial, engaged. Beyond my wildest dreams. My editor is even more excited when I send him a picture of Maradona reading the latest issue of the magazine, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer looking out from the front cover.
“Four. Four. Two,” Maradona says in English. His team plays 4-4-2. “I will tell my friends Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricky Villa that I have been speaking with FourFourTwo.”
Maradona shuffles towards the changing room, then comes back. He has sensed an opportunity. “If Manchester [United] need a coach I am the man to do it,” he says. “I know they sell lots of shirts around the world, but they need to win trophies too. I can do that for them.”
With that he hobbles away grinning. I know those quotes are going to go around the world. And maybe he does too. The trip has been costly, took planning but we’d made it and got the interview with arguably the greatest footballer of all time, the man who went to Naples and helped Napoli win a first ever Scudetto, and won the World Cup with Argentina.
A month or so later and a friend sends a message on WhatsApp: “Did you see stuff from Maradona on the Mirror’s website about him wanting to manage United?”
Adios, Diego.
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