Five years on: football still seeks and celebrates Maradona | OneFootball

November 25, 2020, remains a date etched in collective memory. In a world bent by lockdown, Diego Armando Maradona left, leaving a void that, five years later, shows no sign of being filled.

Five Years Without Maradona: Football Continues to Seek and Tell His Story

What is missing is not just the sports icon, but the absolute symbol of what a ball can represent when treated with pure, almost mystical love, paraphrasing the beautiful editorial published by Sportmediaset.

It's not the rhetoric of football-business speaking, but the spherical object every child dreams of kicking when they start to stand. With Maradona, the ball ceased to be a tool: it became an extension of his body, a point of contact between the human and something that was no longer human.

Maradona and the Ball: A Bond Beyond Technical Skill

The relationship between Diego and the ball didn't follow material, opportunistic, or narcissistic logic. It was a bond that anticipated every scheme, a form of total love that surpassed performance, spectacle, and results. Diego caressed the ball without calculation, as one loves something because they feel it cannot be otherwise.

Football gave him so much: an escape from the ghetto of Villa Fiorita, economic and social redemption, global glory, an almost liturgical adoration. But the essence of his relationship with the ball never changed, not even when the world treated him like a god capable of shaping the destiny of teams and nations.

To describe that bond, strong images are needed, like those evoked by Eduardo Galeano: if during a gala a dusty ball fell from the sky, Maradona would have stopped it with his chest without worrying about the tuxedo he just put on. Or those of Paolo Sorrentino, who in “Youth” depicts him juggling ceaselessly on a tennis court at night, with a lightness that defies age, weight, and time.

The Fragile Genius: Love, Demons, and Falls

Maradona carried on his shoulders immense affection, a public adoration that even prevented him from leaving his house. Yet, neither Naples nor Argentina – the two poles of his sentimental and sporting life – managed to save him from his ghosts.

Diego lived the parabola of absolute talent squeezed to the last drop, between unrepeatable triumphs and painful falls: the bitter farewell to Naples, the disqualification at the USA '94 World Cup, the excesses that no affection, not even the pure one of family, could truly contain.

His death at 60 remains a collective wound, the result of personal mistakes and a system that, after turning him into a myth, let him sink.

The Eternal Legacy: Stadiums, Murals, Trials, Memory

Five years later, Maradona lives in a multitude of places and languages: – in the Naples stadium that bears his name, – in the celebrations of the two recent championships, – in the documentaries and series that continue to tell his story, – in the murals that populate the Spanish Quarters and cities around the world, – in the trials still seeking truth about his death.

But above all, he lives in a simple gesture: the search, on any search engine, for “the most beautiful plays of Maradona.” Every time a video starts, every time a child or adult watches those impossible feats, Diego comes back to life.

The Ultimate Truth: Those Who Have Seen Maradona Have Seen the Impossible

Time passes, football changes, the industry grows, fashions multiply. But those who have seen Maradona, who watched him take a ball as if it were a divine message fallen from the sky, know that experience cannot be replaced.

If a tear appears, it can be blamed on age. But the truth is another: the pain of loss mixes with the pride of being able to say “I saw Maradona.”

Everything can be questioned: traditions, music, algorithms, artificial intelligence. Not that.

Diego remains. Diego continues. Diego belongs to those who know how to recognize the impossible when they see it.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.