DIEGO GOES GLOBAL
                   Boca were forced to take to the road to raise funds for their star
                   player. Diego began to realise that his fame had spread worldwide...
                   but this didn’t always assure his popularity on home soil.

                   Particularly with the fans of arch-rivals River Plate.

                   In the meantime River, who were a bit pissed off at the business about my
                   transfer, had started looking for someone to buy to keep the crowds happy.
                   They made a good choice and brought my old mate Mario Kempes back to
                   Argentina. In fact for me it was another thing to feel proud of. I’d always
                   admired Kempes and it made me feel important that they were going to all the
                   trouble of bringing him over to Argentina just to compete with me.

                   What a bloody genius Kempes was. I always used to hold him up as an
                   example whenever Passarella as manager of Argentina said you couldn’t play
                   with long hair... Think about it. We’d have been without Kempes for the 78
                   World Cup.

                   Anyway, that National tournament couldn’t have turned out any worse for me. I
                   think it was a case of utter exhaustion. We were playing a thousand games a
                   week! Since the end of the Metropolitan tournament people had been talking of
                   nothing else but me being sold to Barcelona and Boca ‘s fight to keep me in
                   Argentina. The club only had one avenue to put the money together, which was
                   to organise friendlies with me on the field. So less than a fortnight after our lap
                   of honour we were travelling to Mexico to play Neza (Holidays? Don’t make me
                   laugh). From Mexico we went to Spain to play Zaragoza and from there straight
                   onto a plane to Paris... Still, I did get to know Paris. My first time in the city I’d
                   been told so much about. I adored the place! Especially one night that we
                   spent at the Lido. I was given a table right at the side of the stage. They even
                   let me in without a tie on... I didn’t know you couldn’t get into a cabaret without
                   a tie on! In Paris we beat Paris Saint Germain 3-1 at the Parc des Princes.
                   But nobody was discussing football. The only topic of conversation was my
                   transfer.

                   After a 1-0 defeat by Instituto at the Bombonera (with a goal by Tucu Meza),
                   Pablo Abbatángelo himself came into the dressing room. He was this real
                   heavyweight director and he thought he’d drop some hints about the players
                   not putting their backs into it... It really got my back up! I wasn’t going to
                   stand for it and on Mónica Cahen D’Anvers’ famous TV programme, 60
                   Minutos, I went and said that only an idiot could say things like that... You
                   could have cut the air with a knife. In the meantime it was just one journey
                   after another. I got to know the world in those days. And, I realised, the world
                   had got to know about me too.

                   In mid-October 1981 we landed at the airport in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast
                   after a stop in Dakar. I’d never seen anything like it before and I don’t think I
                   ever did again in the whole of my career. All these little black guys charging
                   past the police and their machetes and grabbing me and saying, “Diego!
                   Diego!” They really moved me... And later when we went for lunch in the hotel
                   like twenty of them came up to me and one of them said hello and said to me,
                   “Pelusa...” Pelusa! Fluff, he said! A little black guy from the Ivory Coast!

                   By this stage the argument was about whether I’d stay on at Boca or not.
                   The economic situation in Argentina was a disaster and the offers coming in
                   from abroad were causing real pressure. Stacks of dosh, stacks of it, though
                   not as much as there was in the nineties. Think about it: They were putting up
                   six million for me, which at the time was an absolute fortune, the kind of money
                   you couldn’t turn down... In 2000 those kind of figures are dished out for
                   run-of-the-mill defenders! The money I’ve missed out on! I really let my
                   tortoise get away as far as that one goes. 

                   Ok, I admit it. At a press conference on the tour Domingo Corigliano was
                   asked what was going to happen and he said, “We’re going to do our best to
                   keep him in Argentina.” So I stood up on my chair and started shouting
                   “Corigliano! Corigliano!” But I knew it was going to be tough, really tough, and
                   it was really getting to me. I wanted to play in the Copa Libertadores, my
                   biggest debt with football in my country. I wanted to win a title that wasn’t just
                   the kind of thing you wear around the house, just a short haul flight away...

                   That’s why I said something at the time I still believe in. Only the names
                   involved have changed. “Things going on around football get on my nerves. It
                   annoys me that things aren’t simpler. That there are directors who put more
                   into photo opportunities than their club. That in my country there are no
                   institutions that can bankroll Maradona or Passarella or Fillol. That it’s
                   impossible to hold on to players like these. Sometimes people go on to me
                   about the good old days of football and I say ok, there may have been great
                   players in the past. But it’s the ones who are alive who’ve given Argentina two
                   world titles and I’d like them never to have to leave the country.” That’s what I
                   said, back in 1982!

                   To be honest, I started thinking they loved me more than my own country.
                   ’Cause the games we played for Argentina against the likes of Yugoslavia,
                   Czechoslovakia, Germany before the World Cup at River left me feeling
                   strange, bitter. It was my first disagreement with the crowds. They whistled at
                   me, shouted at me to get training and stop screwing around... I couldn’t
                   believe it! I hadn’t had a holiday in ages. I went straight from Boca into the
                   national side. No stopovers on that flight! I hadn't been playing well, true
                   enough. But didn’t Maradona have a right to have an off game once in a while?
 

~Chapter 9

Chapters Index~

Chapter 11~