Throughout the history of soccer, South America has been a place full of icons. Each Icon has its own story and life experiences that affect how it lived. One of these South American icons comes from Argentina, whose name is Diego Maradona. The article where I learned almost everything I know about Diego Maradona is “The Two Sides of Diego Maradona” by Brian Phillips. This article provided a lot of new information on Deigo Phillips while also reminding me of information I already knew about this Argentinian icon.
In the World Cup of 1986, Diego Maradona helped Argentina win the quarter-final against England by sticking out his hand so that the ball would go into the goal. This is one piece of his life that I already knew about; this is one of the biggest scandals in football. When looking at this event on its own, you are basically observing it in a box, not understanding the story around the event. I never knew that Maradona was not a good jumper, making it harder to head the ball. Maradona had to stick out his hand if he wanted to score because he would not have been able to head the ball. Im not saying what he did was okay because it wasn’t, it goes against the whole character of the sport but to understand the event fully you need to know more about Maradona then just one video.
Diego Maradona was a very complicated figure. He was so good at playing soccer, and it made people love him, but when it came to his personality outside of the game of soccer, it was completely different, and it made people hate him. On this topic, I learned that Maradona grew up poor and used soccer to get his parents and himself out of that situation. He wanted to be a person that lower-class people could connect to, but he also wanted the nicer things in life. This basically made lower-class individuals feel disconnected from him; they no longer felt that connection towards him. He also was so good at soccer that everyone thought of him as a source of profit. Off the field, though, he barely could stay with a team for more than a year, which in turn made many more people hate him. Diego Maradona was an icon of Argentina soccer, but he also had a lot of negative qualities that made specific individuals feel disconnected.
By Anna Leonard
