I'll represent the other, unpopular side: the man did as much if not more damage than all the glory he had.
As a footballer his career was finished pretty much 30 years ago. He left the '94 World Cup testing positive for drugs in what was a national embarrassment. His career as a manager was a disaster that existed purely off his prior fame. It's an embarrassment that we are unable to move on past things that happened four decades ago.
As a human being, he lacked morals, never recognized his uncountable illegitimate children, had no care for his body or self beyond the most infantile of desires, and his irrelevant words on a myriad topics were taken as gospel in an astounding display of hypocrisy.
I did not live to see his plays in the 80s. I remember his infamy of the 90s, along with the infamy of many, many public figures of Argentina of that time (along with the coked-up failure of a president Menem and the parade of similarly dubious public figures, all good friends of his too).
I remember being in elementary and my classmates emulating, respecting and excusing the horrible aspects of his character, and I certainly remember how that made dents in the morals of a generation that excused cheating as long as it got results done.
Having later on lived in more developed countries where that stuff just didn't fly, I'll go out on a limb and ascribe at least part of the failures of Latin America to these kinds of attitudes.
I was in Spain, and Maradona played there while he was not yet the shadow of himself that became later.
Lots of people admired this man but when he started doing stupid things like being totally drunk and stoned on public, most people stopped admiring him in all places but in Argentina.
I traveled to places like Bariloche and specially Buenos Aires for a very sort time,a month or so, and I could not understand almost the deity that such a bad example represented there.
But then an Argentinian friend explained it to me: You do not understand. It was because of the Malvinas, the English, Maradona represented something like a general that won over the same that defeated and humiliated us and so on...
And then it made sense. I had not made the connection before that.
And yes I agree with you that South America in general follows terrible role models. Places like Colombia or Venezuela look like paradise and are extremely wealthy but then the environment is Hell.
It is very interesting that Argentina and Chile are somewhat like the US and Europe but in reverse, the more to the South you go, the more serious people are, only that there is less and less people and land there to become significant.
First of all, most people admire Maradona as a footballer, not as a person. His unique skills are admired by fans and footballers all over the world, including Lineker, Emlyn Hughes, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Romario, Pep Guardiola, Mourinho, Zidane, Platini, Messi, etc. If you don't consider his abilities to be outstanding, then you are probably not a big football fan.
Secondly, what's your definition of "being a cheat" in football? Let me remind you that kicking Maradona during a match, trying to break his legs so he can no longer play, is cheating. Punching, pushing, hurting someone on purpose is cheating. Even one of the BBC commentators, Emlyn Hughes, said during the England vs Argentina match: "Oh, that was awful. He deserves a red car. Oh well, looks like we got away with it".
Yes, hurting a player on purpose is cheating (England 1986), faking a penalty is cheating (Germany 1990), and scoring a goal with your hand is also cheating (Argentina 1986).
This is why FIFA invented the concept of Fair Play, to stop the English players from hurting others. And also why FIFA invented the VAR, to stop Argentine players from scoring goals with their hand and Germans from faking penalties.
I don't disagree with you. But it is not like first world countries are inmune. Just look at a current president whose lies, cheating and incompetence are inexplicably excused by 70 million first world voters.
Oh I'm not saying that it's immune at all, but the outrage against Trump is at the very least visible and palpable and those who excuse them are visibly ashamed of the support.
But for those of us who did _not_ watch him in the 80s, those of us who didn't necessarily get a kick of him sticking it up the Brits, those of us who grew up in the 90s and 00s and watched him go from one drug-addled binge to the next and then seeing him grift on his career as a "manager"...
Well, there wasn't much glory for that. I understand the astounding emotional effect for those who saw him in the past, but for a lot of us watching from a different point in time there wasn't much that was positive.
What's your point? The documentary doesn't really touch on basically any of the points that this comment refers to as it ends around 1990.
I liked the documentary though, because I was also born in the 90s so I mostly saw the ugly part of Diego.
I guess my point is that the parent comments referred to Maradona rather than to Diego. The documentary made me realize that it is actually not him but all those Napoli fans that grasped him that caused his demise. If he were able to leave Napoli for a calmer retirement perhaps he would not become what he eventually became. It was the greed of Ferraino (Napoli FC President) which kept him in Napoli and caused him to become infamous, according to the documentary.
As a footballer his career was finished pretty much 30 years ago. He left the '94 World Cup testing positive for drugs in what was a national embarrassment. His career as a manager was a disaster that existed purely off his prior fame. It's an embarrassment that we are unable to move on past things that happened four decades ago.
As a human being, he lacked morals, never recognized his uncountable illegitimate children, had no care for his body or self beyond the most infantile of desires, and his irrelevant words on a myriad topics were taken as gospel in an astounding display of hypocrisy.
I did not live to see his plays in the 80s. I remember his infamy of the 90s, along with the infamy of many, many public figures of Argentina of that time (along with the coked-up failure of a president Menem and the parade of similarly dubious public figures, all good friends of his too).
I remember being in elementary and my classmates emulating, respecting and excusing the horrible aspects of his character, and I certainly remember how that made dents in the morals of a generation that excused cheating as long as it got results done.
Having later on lived in more developed countries where that stuff just didn't fly, I'll go out on a limb and ascribe at least part of the failures of Latin America to these kinds of attitudes.