The story of Diego Armando Maradona at Napoli is one of the most special and unique in the world of football, especially for the Italian entity; The Argentine player arrived at said club in 1984, which meant an important rebirth for the institution that until that time had never been able to win a Serie A championship.
With the help of ‘Pelusa’, Napoli was able to win 5 titles, but the most renowned was the UEFA Cup in the 1988/89 season, the only one at an international level in the club’s history. A total of two Serie A, one Italian Cup and also one Italian Super Cup.
However, Maradona was never able to return to Napoli either as a player or as a manager., a pending dream of the world champion with the Argentine national team. This became public knowledge thanks to an interview given by Diego Maradona Jr., one of the five children recognized by the former Sevilla and FC Barcelona player, in the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera.
The journalist, Fabio Postiglione, asked him what his father’s dream was and the answer was blunt and forceful.: “Being coach of Naples.” Both were distant until the death of the Argentine idol, an event that occurred on November 25, 2020.
Maradona as coach
‘El Pelusa’ was in charge of teams such as Mandiyú de Corrientes and Racing with cycles of a few months. In 2000, he landed in Almagro as a manager and reached the pinnacle of the profession in October 2008, when he was elected as the new coach of the Argentine national team until its elimination in the quarterfinals of the World Cup in South Africa in 2010.
Maradona would head to the United Arab Emirates to be the head coach of Al-Wasl and Al-Fujairah. He would later return to Latin America to take charge of the Dorados de Sinaloa, a team that trusted him to continue the battle for promotion to Mexico’s first category and, in September 2019, he took on his last job at Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata.
Diego Júnior and Maradona in privacy
“See how we’re on the couch now chatting? Dad was like that. A very normal man who liked very normal things. We drank mate, smoked a cigar and talked for hours. About football and life. “We danced.”
He was also asked about his father’s addictions in his personal life: “He did not feel free and in fact he was not. What do I mean? First of all, drug use, my father was a sick man. He wasn’t proud of it, especially with us. He was embarrassed. And he warned me: ‘Never try it, it will ruin your life, don’t be stupid, it’s an infamous drug.’ He proudly said that he had gotten out of there.”
In addition to this, Diego Armando Maradona’s son confessed his father’s ‘secret dream’ that he finally could not achieve but with which he always had hope.: “seeing his five children sitting at the same table.” Ultimately, she gave a crude line about the last time she heard from him. That statement goes back to the surgical intervention for a hematoma on the head a few days after his death: “The day after the operation. He told me that everything had gone well, that he felt strong and that he was not afraid.”
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