Soccer fans are fortunate to live in a time when two superstars are simultaneously
making the claim to be the best player in the history of the sport - and more
fortunate still that we can watch the contest between Lionel Messi and Cristiano
Ronaldo play out, week in and week out, live before a global audience of billions.
Thanks to YouTube, I can watch high-quality videos of their most compelling
performances, and of every goal they've ever scored.
When Diego Maradona was staking his claim to the title of best ever, most of the
world could only get a quadrennial glimpse of his genius, when he turned out for
Argentina in the '82, '86, '90 and '94 World Cups. Growing up in India during that
period, I never saw highlights of his performances for FC Barcelona or Napoli (a
city where he's still regarded as part deity, part royalty).
There are now some video highlights online that preserve a grainy record of him in
his pomp - including THAT goal against England in the Azteca Stadium on June 22,
1986. But these only hint at what he was capable of. They don't constitute
sufficient supporting evidence to the argument that he was the best ever.
What makes it harder still is the even scarcer evidence for claimants of previous
generations: Hungary's Ferenc Puskas, Spain and Argentina's Alfredo di Stefano,
Brazil's Pele, the Dutchman Johan Cruyff, Germany's Franz Beckenbauer, et al. That
they played under different conditions and rules, and in different positions, makes
the argument moot, anyway.
We can't, then, know if Maradona was technically the best to have kicked a ball.
Nevertheless, I'm here to argue that he was the greatest of all time. And my case
rests on the simple fact that he, more than all the other claimants named here,
came closest to defying the dictum that soccer is a team sport.
For most of his career, Maradona played in teams that lacked any other world-
beating players. Run your eye down the list of the Napoli squad with which he
conquered Italian soccer in 1986-87, and there's not a single other player who
would make it to a Serie A hall of fame. He had a slightly better supporting cast
in the Argentina sides that he took to two World Cup finals - winning it in '86,
and coming agonizingly close in '90 - but nobody would argue that Jorge Valdano was
to Maradona what, say, Jairzinho was to Pele in '70.
It is one thing to be a brilliant player surrounded by other brilliant players; in
this regard Messi and Ronaldo have been exceptionally fortunate with their club
teams. But Maradona made magic out of mediocre materials.
What makes this even more remarkable is the weight of expectation he carried on his
diminutive frame. When he signed for Napoli in 1984, the club had never won the
Italian league, and yet its fans immediately began to dream of championship glory.
The "pibe de oro," or golden boy, was as much talisman as captain and player.
Other footballers - Messi among them - have since had to cope with comparable
pressure, but modern superstars are surrounded by a scaffolding of public relations
professionals and psychiatrists to help them. Maradona, lacking support off the
field as he did on it, nonetheless delivered the "oro" for club and country over
and over again.
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Until he didn't. It was probably inevitable that the burdens of his genius would
eventually crush him, and they did so in spectacular fashion. But he withstood them
long enough to cast in bronze - like the plaque commemorating THAT goal outside the
Azteca Stadium - his claim to being the greatest of all time.
RIP, Diego Armando Maradona, GOAT.
