ITALIA '90
                   It was going to be our home over the next month and like I did in Mexico I
                   was saying it would be till the final, right till the final. My room had a balcony
                   covered in flowers overlooking the training pitches and I always had music on
                   tap. These were the days of the lambada and my friend Antonio Careca had
                   given me this brilliant cassette.

                   More important than having my Ferraris or what not at the team headquarters
                   was a bout of flu that had forced me to take antibiotics. All the detox work I’d
                   put in went a bit to pot but nobody talked about that.

                   Actually the only thing that stopped me feeling a hundred percent happy about
                   things was daft. My right big toe... I’ve had things happen to me in football
                   before. But a knackered big toe? I mean! The one and only time! In the
                   previous games against Israel and Valencia I’d had my foot trodden on
                   especially badly right in the same place each time and my big toenail was a
                   state. In training I was hobbling around like a condemned man. I tried
                   injections, cotton wool, wearing bigger boots, the works, but nothing doing.

                   El Loco Bilardo couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about my big toenail.

                   On Sunday morning of June 3, I went to the Dal Monte Institute in Rome with
                   Doc Raúl Madero and they put the famous splint on to protect my toenail. It
                   was like this little shell made of this kind of light hard carbon fibre used in
                   aeronautics. Which is why I used to say I‘d been turned into a plane. Boom
                   boom...

                   Valdano, who should have been playing in that World Cup, not working as a
                   commentator, wrote in the Spanish newspaper, El País, “There’s no need for
                   anyone to worry. The greatest footballing talent in the world is safely tucked
                   away in the perfect place: the body of Diego Armando Maradona. The
                   depository of this treasure (this strongbox of bones, muscles and tendons
                   containing untold footballing wiles) is a miracle in itself.”

                   It was nearly time to go out onto the pitch. On Friday 8 June in the bowels of
                   the Meazza, I felt this weird atmosphere. I could feel it on my skin, inside my
                   soul. Like some kind of huge, cold silence...

                  When we went out with me at the front, I could hear this whistling. I’ve hardly
                   ever heard anything like it in all my career. It was deafening. But I didn’t let it
                   get to me. No chance. It just made me feel stronger.

                   During the national anthem, which you could hardly hear over the Italians’
                   booing, I tried to hold my chin up high while my eyes roamed over the crowd.

                   Course I got called in for a drugs test. I was bound to be, me. Then I marched
                   off to the press conference. I was being ironic but I think I came out with
                   something that’s really true. “The only pleasure I got this afternoon was
                   finding out that thanks to me, the Milanese put aside their racism for the first
                   time today by supporting the Africans...”

                   I told the lads that in the San Paolo stadium there was even a welcome sign
                   with “Right, we’re home” on it.

                   “If the Neapolitans all come along tomorrow to cheer me on and shout for
                   Argentina, they’ll see how happy I’ll be... But I do want to say they’ve already
                   given me everything. I’ve got no right to demand anything from them.

                   It felt more like a steeplechase than a World Cup. Playing well under those
                   conditions was asking too much. The trick was to win by any means at our
                   disposal. We couldn’t do much about it in the first forty-five minutes. 

                   Monday 18 June. We walked to the dressing room as if we’d already been
                   beaten. We just couldn’t break the Romanian defence. In the second half I at
                   least got a cross in and El Negro Monzón, Pedro Damián Monzón, the lovely
                   lad, put it straight into the back of the net... 1-0 and we were hanging on,
                   hanging on for dear life. True enough, we got through. But it was like climbing
                   into the quarter-finals through the window.

                   I couldn’t believe and just wouldn’t accept that there were people who were
                   delighted at the setbacks I had. That there were people who actually enjoyed
                   them and looked forward to them

~Chapter 13

Chapters Index~

Chapter 15~