Diego Maradona: The Cult & Collapse of Santa Maradona

Maradona was an artist who inspired the mystical. Like Zidane after him, Maradona fuelled myths in the zealous minds of his followers and the collective psyche of his country. But he was too good for his own good. A soccer genius, Maradona rose from the slums of Buenos Aires to become an icon and an idol in the Catholic lands of Argentina and Italy. Author of the infamous Hand of God goal that he punched into the English net in Mexico ‘86, most of his goals were end-to-end rushes. He was like watching Bobby Orr in short-shorts and a pair of Adidas.

But Maradona was given to excess. Derailed multiple times for cocaine violations, and banned from the 1994 World Cup due to an ephedrine-tainted urine sample, Maradona fell off the world stage in tragic fashion. Despite his collapse, Maradona has remained in the Latin American spotlight well into his retirement; whether as a clown, as a talking head, or as a tribal god is unclear.

For those who don’t know the story of his rise and fall, it goes something like this. Born in the Buenos Aires shantytown of Villa Fiorito in 1960, Diego Armando Maradona grew up in piss-poor poverty. His family’s destitution was extreme, a fact that made Diego’s rise to superstardom one of the greatest rags-to-riches stories of all time.

One of the more notorious tales from his youth recalls the grim day that Diego lost his way at home one evening after dark. Struggling to find his way through the hallway, Diego stumbled and fell into a cesspit that served as the family toilet. As legend has it, Maradona’s uncle Cirilo was nearby, and while coming to Diego’s rescue, Uncle Cirilo shouted out, “Diegito, keep your head above the shit!”. Diegito was indeed saved, but it’s not exactly the stuff of Catholic baptism.

Despite the rather putrid omen, family friend Jose Trotte described the young Diego in these terms: “He was not educated, he had no sophistication. He was shirtless and barefooted. He was just this street kid with a gift from God.” The “gift from God”, of course, was Maradona’s golden ticket out of the slum. It was also his family’s ticket out of the slum. And it was Argentina’s ticket to the promised land. It was an immense mountain of pressure, to be sure, but Maradona was made for the stage. Throughout the 80s, Maradona performed brilliantly on every new stage that came his way. He was charismatic, passionate, and full of coke-summoned energy.

For about a decade, the idea of Maradona’s predestination was a compelling myth. But like a lottery winner, he was unable to deal with his sudden rise in social standing. Much of his private time in Italy was spent in public, as he cavorted with prostitutes, while consuming gluttonous amounts of cocaine.

Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of Maradona’s bipolar story is the fact that he was a raging cokehead during the peak of his soccer career. Introduced to cocaine while in Barcelona, Maradona became an addict in Napoli, a small market team he led to two Italian Championships. But what else should you expect from a bull-headed prima donna straight out of the slums? Especially when he trumps the Pope in social importance? Naturally, the Napoli tifosi treated Maradona like a god. So Maradona behaved in turn like a drug-addled rock star.

Despite the cocaine, Maradona’s legend grew. In 1986, at the peak of his coke consumption, he was also at the summit of his soccer status. That year, he scored 5 brilliant goals and set up 5 others in leading a mediocre Argentine squad on a scintillating run to the World Cup. His miraculous performance also cemented his reign as the greatest footballer in the world.

By the end of the 80s, however, Maradona’s greatness was in decline, and the drug tests started coming back positive. In 1990, there was another World Cup Final, but Argentina lost, and it was clear that Maradona’s magic had vanished. Then, in 1991, he tested positive for cocaine and was suspended for 15 months. But the tribulation was only beginning. Two games into the 1994 World Cup, he tested positive for ephedrine, and was banned from the competition. Then, in 1997, he again tested positive for cocaine, and this third suspension basically signaled the end of an illustrious roller-coaster career.

Of course, one of the consequences of unanimous praise is that there is never a middle ground to help moderate the supernatural treatment you receive. With very little transition time to adjust to new realities, Maradona went from being dirt poor to filthy rich; then he turned from a street urchin into a mortal god.

But after living like a decadent rock star during that vital period of a man’s development when he learns what he can’t afford to do, Maradona could always afford to play the fool. After all, there is a certain level of superstar who is expected to live the life of never-ending excess. We welcome a god’s fatal flaw like a good tragicomedy, laughing when it’s convenient, and shaking our heads in paternal disbelief when the man comes crashing down. In Maradona’s case, he fell from glory like a fat man doing a belly-flop.

Given the roller-coaster life he has led, it is of course easy to point the finger at Maradona and call him Icarus. As part of his crash-and-burn, a morbidly obese version of Diego Maradona suffered a cocaine-induced heart attack that left him recuperating in a Buenos Aires hospital. But Argentina did not treat him as a scapegoat who had disgraced his people. Instead, pilgrims traveled from distant lands to pay homage to their gargantuan hero.

Muhammad Ali: The Pulpit of Fame

At the dawn of the broadcasting age, Muhammad Ali was perhaps the first man to achieve mainstream fame. And unlike many of today’s stars who bask in the spotlight like they’re sun tanning (Paris Hilton and Terrell Owens come to mind), Ali was a celebrity worth celebrating. Politically astute, poetically inclined, and spiritually enlightened, Ali used his pulpit of fame to scintillating effect.

At times, he would joke around with boastful one-liners. “I’m so mean,” he once quipped with a nudge and a wink, “I make medicine sick.” On other occasions, his one-liners doubled as riddles. “I don’t always know what I’m talking about, but I know I’m right.” And then, as soon as you pigeonholed Ali as a prankster, he would turn profound. Fully aware that he was a cultural icon in a new era of mass media, Ali once observed that he was “the most recognized man that ever lived, ’cuz there weren’t no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn’t know about them.”

Today, of course, Ali is widely respected as a spiritual and principled man whose public persona transcended his spotless boxing pedigree. Back in the early 1960s, though, when he first entered the public spotlight as a bragadocious black kid from Louisville, Kentucky known as Cassius Clay, the public had no idea what to do with him. America, after all, was on the eve of a civil rights movement, and it was clear from an early stage that the cocky young Clay was much more than a boxing prodigy. He was also an entertainer with a racial agenda, and in a time of social upheaval, the natural reaction among white fans and the mainstream media was to vilify Clay.

En route to becoming a controversial media star, Cassius Clay did, of course, earn his stripes in the ring. In 1960, at the Summer Olympics in Rome, Clay won Gold in the Light Heavyweight division, a victory that ended his amateur career with an astonishing record of 100 wins and 5 losses. For the next four years, Clay worked his way through the heavyweight ranks, building himself a reputation for correctly predicting the round in which he would finish his opponent; or, in Clay’s poetic turn of phrase: “They all will fall in the round I call.” After 19 straight victories as a professional, many of which came by technical knockout in the round he had called, Clay was earning the right to talk; and as time would tell, the young man from Louisville had a lot to say about life outside the ring.

By February of 1964, Clay had earned a title shot against Sonny Liston, the reigning heavyweight champ. The only problem was that Cassius Clay was on the verge of becoming Muhammad Ali, a fact that didn’t bode well for the fight’s promoter, Bill Faversham. In the pre-fight build-up, rumours of Clay’s involvement with Malcolm X and The Nation of Islam had been making the rounds. The Nation of Islam was—and still is—an Islamic religious group whose political mission is to peacefully empower black men and women. But of course religion is never a simple matter, and over its 70-year history, The Nation of Islam has also been seen as a hate group because of its strong political agenda which seeks to challenge white social supremacy. Needless to say, from Bill Faversham’s marketing perspective, Clay was better off being billed as a brash young prodigy from the American South than as Muhammad Ali, a devout Muslim and member of the mysterious Nation of Islam, motivations unknown. In any case, the Liston-Clay fight finally took place after Clay agreed to keep his newly-minted identity in the dressing room—at least until after the fight.

The fight itself was a see-saw affair that Clay won in strange fashion when Liston refused to answer the bell for the 7^th round. So on February 25, 1964, Cassius Clay became the Heavyweight Champion of the world; and the next day, he dropped his ‘slave name’, replaced it with Muhammad Ali, announced his affiliation with the Nation of Islam, and stated the following: “I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and in peace…I’m not a Christian anymore.” And so it was; Muhammad Ali was born.

For the next few years, Ali defended his identity as well as his title. In 1967, after several title defenses, Ali fought Ernie “The Octopus” Terrell in one of the more venomous matches the sport of boxing has ever seen. The fight took place at the Houston Astrodome, and it dragged on for the full 15 rounds, in large part because Ali took no pity on Terrell. According to most observers, Ali didn’t want to put Terrell out of his misery. Prior to the fight, you see, Terrell had taunted Ali by calling him ‘Clay’. As the fight wore on and Ali toyed with a tiring Terrell, Ali began shouting at him, “What’s my name, Uncle Tom? … What’s my name?”. In the end, Ali won 13 of the 15 rounds, all the while punishing Terrell for his transgression both physically and verbally.

As the 1960s wore on, so too did the Vietnam War (1959 – 1975), and Muhammad Ali was eventually called upon to serve his country. In 1967, when Ali was drafted, the war was in its eighth year and President Lyndon Johnson had greatly expanded the war effort in an attempt to end what was turning into a fiasco both on the ground and in the public eye. The Vietnam War, it is important to recall, was the first war any public had seen on TV. Similarly, Ali was one of the first high-profile athletes of the television era, and his anti-war stance added fuel to an already fiery debate about Vietnam. Today, it is hard to imagine life without mass dissemination of news, gossip, and celebrity updates, but in the late 1960s, it was a new phenomenon, and Ali played every angle of the new-media game.

In 1966, when asked about the possibility of being drafted by the American military, Ali had this to say: “I ain’t got no quarrel against them Viet Cong. They never called me nigger.” Then, in April of 1967, during his induction into the U.S. Armed Forces, Ali backed up his words. Although he showed up for the ceremony, Ali refused to step forward when his name was called. As a result, he was arrested and prosecuted for draft evasion and his boxing license and heavyweight belt were revoked. He didn’t end up serving jail time, but his willingness to sacrifice freedom as well as his boxing career was a profound statement about the relative insignificance of the sports world. In Ali’s self-affirming words, “I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.” Despite the very American ring to his words, Ali was branded a traitor.

The public backlash Ali accepted and dealt with throughout his career in the spotlight goes to show how difficult it is for celebrities to stand in the limelight and take a social stand. At every turn, Ali was controversial and courageous, willingly sacrificing the fleeting gifts of fame and money for the loftier goals of freedom and salvation. Sadly, these latter qualities are remarkably absent in today’s mainstream media. From time to time, we hear about a golfer’s favourite charities, or we see footage of a basketball player signing autographs, or we get a staged photo-op of a football star playing with a little kid. Naturally, these are heart-warming stories, but they’re mostly designed by PR people whose job it is to brand our beloved athletes in a favourable light. Of course, such branding campaigns also help us overlook the nastier sides of a culture built on idolatry. What is grossly missing, however, is the athlete who believes in something greater than the game. Sports, after all, are just games we play. But as money and advertising spin their webs around the sports world, it is increasingly difficult for athletes to believe there can be anything that transcends the game they play.

Furthermore, in an era of delinquent and grossly overpaid athletes, perhaps the greatest crime in the sports marketplace is the total failure of athletes to talk about anything beyond the game. Can you imagine Tiger Woods making news by declaring a personal moratorium on Nike products until his multi-million-dollar sponsor stops operating in sweat shops? Or how about Sidney Crosby refusing to take anything more than $1 million because anything more would be an insult to the toiling men and women of Steel City? Or how about a gay jock with the balls to stand up and talk proudly and profoundly about life in the locker room? Just imagine the power these young men could wield if only they believed in something beyond the myth of winning.

Finally, if the advertising era has taught us anything in the 40-plus years since Ali refused to go to war, it is that democracy in America now has everything to do with what famous people think and say. So much now depends on the opinions of our heroes; and when people like Ali use their pop-culture pulpits to drop the odd political bomb, people pay attention.