Sport

Diego Armando Maradona

Diego Armando Maradona was born on October 30, 1960, in Villa Fiorito, province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was raised in an underprivileged family and spent his adolescence playing football in the streets of his neighborhood.

He made his debut at the age of 16 and throughout his professional career he played 692 official games scoring 352 goals. He played 90 games for the Argentine National Team and scored 33 goals, 8 of them in world cups. He was a five time maximum scorer and got 10 titles with: National Juvenile World Cup (1979), Boca Juniors (1981), Barcelona (Copa del Rey 1983), World Cup (Mexico, 1986), Napoli (Scudetto 1987 and 1990); Italian Cup (1987), UEFA Cup (1989), Italian Supercup (1991) and Artemio Franchi Cup (1993).

His first team was called Estrella Roja (Red Star) and was founded by his father for the neighborhood boys. One of the players was Gregorio "El Goyo" Carrizo, who played in the lower divisions of Argentinos Juniors, and who helped Diego to be part of the team called "Los Cebollitas" (the small onions). With only 14 years of age, he astounded the public at his first game with the team and gained reputation and respect as a player. With "Los Cebollitas" he kept a winning spree of over one hundred games.


At 16 he made his debut in the first division of the club Argentinos Juniors and soon after he scored his first goal against San Lorenzo de Mar del Plata. He played for Argentinos Juniors until 1980, totaling 166 games where he scored 115 goals.

In 1977, he debuted with the Argentine National Team against Hungary and in the 1978 World Cup, Menotti (National Teams' coach) excluded him from the team arguing lack of experience.

In the Juvenile World Cup held in Japan in 1979, Maradona was the captain and the team had an implacable campaign winning the Juvenile World Champion in Tokyo.

Afterwards, Diego signed with the Boca Juniors Athletic Club and played his first game with them in 1981 scoring 2 goals against Talleres de C?rdoba team and the team eventually won the national championship by Diego Armando Maradona's hand.

In 1984 he began to play for the Italian club "Napoli" and debuted at the San Paolo stadium during the Italian Cup where he scored the winning goal. From then on, Diego started a winning spree with Napoli and earned them their first championship (Scudetto) in the history of the club during the '86-'87 season.


In the 1986 World Cup Championship, held in Mexico, the Argentine National Team led by the coach Carlos Bilardo obtained the world's title after defeating Germany 3-2 in the final game.

The most controversial game of the championship was against England where Diego scored two goals. The first one was very questioned by the famous maneuver later called "La Mano de Dios" (God's Hand) where it was argued that Maradona used his hand to score the goal, while the second goal is considered to be the best goal of all the times. Diego took the ball behind the midfield line and after avoiding all the English players who were trying to stop him, he kept going and scored. In the decade of 1990, his reputation and his ability were damaged by his addiction to drugs, which he tried to control in various opportunities, including a detoxification in a clinic in Cuba. In July of 1990, Maradona played his second final in a World Cup, Italy ' 90, where Germany defeated Argentina for 1-0.

posted by Dr.Islam @ 06:40