It's too little too late for me and Maradona

LOCKER ROOM : How can the inspired beauty of his play co-exist with his crass boorishness?

LOCKER ROOM: How can the inspired beauty of his play co-exist with his crass boorishness?

A NUMBER of years ago myself and young Mr Duggan of this parish found ourselves at large in the city of Sydney during the early hours of the morning. We had time to kill and a thirst to deal with. It was the era when the newspaper was disgustingly rich and we were living like a couple of Ceann Comhairles out on a jolly.

The Olympic Games were happening in the city just then and young Mr Duggan was such a prodigy at the scribbling that I was unsure as to whether he would even be served. In time, however, we repaired to a subterranean bar. I remember thinking that, if I could just set Duggan on the road to alcoholism and ruin, my job would be safe for a few years longer.

In that narrow little bar we passed a mildly bizarre night in the company of the proprietors, a group of young fellas whose twin passions were hookers and Mike Tyson. I remember the clammy, squirmy discomfort as they proudly showed us the barstools upon which various styles of paid-for sexual congress had been achieved.

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Just as discomfiting was their devotion to Iron Mike. I remember us walking back to our hotel as dawn was creeping up (I contemplated cleaving Duggan’s skull with a large rock. Just to keep the job safe when the recession came, you know.) and debating the Tyson thing with Duggan.

He could see the almost nihilistic attraction of Tyson. I couldn’t get past my political correctness. I was genuinely surprised Tyson, for whom one could feel disdain or sympathy (he being a victim in his own way) would be held in such affection. It seemed like an unlikely response to deep-set alienation.

And since then (realising that if I could artificially develop an intellect as broad as Duggan’s the job might be safe) I have spent more time than is normal or healthy trying to develop an appreciation of Mike Tyson. To an extent it has worked, although he still wouldn’t be among my top-10 rapist thugs to get stuck in a lift with. The pathos of his life, though, is compelling, and as his decline becomes a morality tale in itself Tyson assumes a certain appeal. You could root for him.

The Germans must have a word for that distressing feeling when you just don’t get that thing which people you admire and respect understand instantly. The great advantage about being so shallow is that you can do something about it. I remember once being involved in a conversation with people who had funny but expensive haircuts and were very ironic. I realised to my horror that the band Wet Wet Wet – whom I considered not just progressive but winningly cheerful – might as well have been war criminals for all the respect they enjoyed among my friends. The next day I bought the entire back catalogue of Portishead and became broody and thoughtful for quite some time.

I have applied the same process to Diego Armando Maradona, but in his case I have gotten nowhere. I still find his lack of class, his inability to comport himself with any semblance of dignity, to be in absurd and depressing conflict with his genius as a footballer. How can the inspired beauty of his play co-exist with his crass boorishness?

Funny thing is that Maradona started at or near the top in my estimation. As with the rest of the world, I feel the rules of fairness should generally cease to apply when the victims are the English soccer team, and the Hand of God goal is one of those things I never tire of watching. That summer, in fact, to be living as a feckless young fella in London and watching that tournament unfold as Maradona’s stage was one of the great pleasures of life.

Last week, though, with the most extraordinarily gifted panel of players at his disposal, Maradona watched his side slump over the line into next year’s World Cup finals. He did so after a qualifying campaign which mixed the banal with the ridiculous, a campaign which included the distinctive low of a record 6-1 defeat to Bolivia.

It was all done and dusted when Maradona gave a press conference during which he told the media, “You lot take it up the a***”, before adding coyly, “if the ladies will pardon the expression”. This, we can assume, is the same sad homophobia which surfaced in Maradona when he accused Pele of living “a gay life” (a heinous insult in Maradona’s view) after Pele withheld his seal of approval from Maradona on account of his past as a coke fiend.

Anyway, Maradona added a rider (sorry) by grabbing his genitals in a gesture of machismo disdain. “But certain people who have not supported me, and you know who you are, can keep sucking,” he added.

And with that, a tipping point for me, I realised that for the first time I would not be rooting for Argentina to win next year’s World Cup.

(Of course, Maradona’s insult was less gratuitous and wounding than he imagined. In a figurative way, at least, we sports journalists do experience precisely that which Maradona said we experience. People like Diego have never grown up enough to realise that the media doesn’t exist as some sort of corpulent fan club, and there is, Diego implied, a certain lack of dignity involved in the trade-off between objective comment and continued access.)

Again, I had been trying hard to cultivate an appreciation of Maradona. Having supported Carlos Menem during the 1990s and allegedly been friends with the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, while he was playing in that city, the little fella has come around to more progressive causes in recent times, getting tattoos of Fidel and Che in the precise places where I have my Portishead tats. We are a lot alike.

Sadly, it’s too little too late for me and Diego. If you can’t win with a bit of grace and class and dignity, can’t comport yourself with a serenity and wisdom which age can bring, perhaps the adulation was misplaced and greatness is sometimes conferred on the irredeemably callow.

I have this discussion with people about my little Diego problem, and they say to me that I have to look at where he came from, as if a hard upbringing was a guarantor of a poor personality. Most of the great footballers, many of the greatest sports people we have known, grew up in poverty and found a way out through their talents.

That experience gave them a sense of perspective and an appreciation of the world at large which seems to be lacking in Maradona’s self-centred universe.

Pity.