As the sons of Pelé and Diego Maradona found out, it can be fraught filling a father’s lofty bootsMy father was a lawyer and, in my childhood imagination and so far as I can ascertain also in fact, quite a good one. From time to time, as I blundered towards adulthood with no obvious idea what to do when I got there, he would encourage me towards the law, a vocation he always found intellectually stimulating and also, serendipitously, financially rewarding. In this endeavour, alas, he had no success. Why, I reasoned, would I voluntarily enter a profession in which I would be doomed to be forever compared unfavourably with an overachieving parent? With this same logic in mind, I...
Late-season collapse was accompanied by strange events off the field as Napoli sought a second successive title in 1987-88When Napoli beat Juventus 1-0 in November 1985, thanks to a Diego Maradona free-kick, five people fainted in the stadium and two had heart attacks. On the television news that night, a stern-faced presenter announced: “So quite literally by scoring this goal, Maradona made a big mess.” A year and a half later, Napoli were champions of Italy, their first scudetto in a long, underwhelming history. The party went on for two months. Hundreds of newborn boys were named Diego, the girls Diega.These are details from the riveting, immersive new documentary Diego Maradona, made by Asif Kapadia, whose previous films have traced...
The tournament used to make its own stars but is now overdue an outstanding, trophy-winning individual performanceMoscow is a fascinating place to enter for the first time, its fringes marked by an endless scroll of huge stickle-brick buildings and gaudy roadside shopping complexes. Heading in from this angle, before the austere majesty of the city centre, it seems the chief beneficiary of Russia’s great opening out was that well-known US imperialist Colonel Sanders, who can be seen grinning down like Lenin’s crispy-fried southern gentleman cousin from his endless lighted placards, impassive, stoical and oddly comforting.But then, like many other nations, Russia does love an icon. Look around the early days of this World Cup and certain faces just keep looming...
The 1986 quarter-final between England and Argentina is famous for one of football’s most iconic moments. But there was more to this goal – and match – than a single act of larcenyHigh noon, one blistering Sunday in Mexico City, and a quarter-final shootout between two arch rivals who hadn’t met in a World Cup for 20 years and had grievance on their minds. Rattín’s Revenge! Or, in the offices of various tabloid newspapers and the heads of the slow: Falklands II. Here are 10 things that happened during a first half everyone’s long forgotten about:1) Just before kick-off, instead of focusing on the players warming up in the oppressive sun, the Mexican television director chose to zoom in on...
François Omam-Biyik’s goal and an unheralded team of journeymen defeated Diego Maradona’s world championsOf the great World Cup upsets – the USA’s victory over England in 1950, North Korea’s over Italy in 1966 and Algeria’s over West Germany in 1982 probably push it close – this one stands alone in myth and memory. It was not a perfect match but it was an irresistible narrative, as the World Cup champions, led by the great Diego Maradona, were vanquished by an unheralded team largely assembled of journeymen players from the French lower divisions – though for some of them even that was either an impossible dream or a distant memory.In the space of 90 minutes African football, once derided for being...