Calcio: A History of Italian Football. John Foot

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СКАЧАТЬ Sivori and José Altafini in the 1960s. Nobody, however, has ever come close to the adulation received by the greatest player ever to play for Napoli, and the only man to bring a championship trophy to the city: Diego Armando Maradona.

      The King. Maradona and Napoli. 1984–1991

      In the still desperately poor Spanish Quarters of Naples, groups of small boys drive motorbikes at high speeds through the tiny streets. Here, you can still see damage from the 1980 earthquake and the population density is amongst the highest in Western Europe. On one wall, towards the top of the quartieri, there is a huge mural. It depicts a man with black curly hair and a blue Napoli shirt. The mural is so large that an (illegal) window only takes up part of the face. It is peppered with bullet holes – local criminals used it for target practice, it appears.¹³ The man is instantly recognizable, and not just to locals: Diego Armando Maradona – the King of Naples. Maradona played for Napoli between 1984 and 1991. In that time the team, which had won only two Italian Cups in its entire history, triumphed twice in the Italian championship (and finished second twice), as well as winning an Italian Cup, a UEFA Cup and an Italian supercup. In the same period, Maradona won the World Cup with Argentina and pushed his team to a second successive final, beating Italy, in 1990, in Naples of all places, on penalties. Since Maradona’s departure, Napoli have returned to their previous ways, winning nothing. In 2005 they were to be found way down in Serie C after having gone bankrupt. For a team with a fan-base which rivals that of the big three Serie A clubs, this was an astonishing decline.

      The story of Maradona’s time at Napoli, when he was probably the best player in the best league in the world (a league with Platini and Mattheus and Van Basten and Zico), was one of poetry, histrionics, scandal, suspicion and doping. It was also the story of the greatest series of celebrations ever seen in domestic football history.

      

      Between 70,000 and 90,000 people turned up, paying 1,000 lire each, to watch Maradona kick a ball around in the San Paolo stadium after he had been signed in June 1984, eclipsing the 20,000 who saw Omar Sivori train twenty years earlier. Tortuous negotiations with Barcelona had ended with the 23-year-old arriving at the end of the season, for fourteen thousand million lire, a record fee at the time. Napoli had a history of buying big, but their free-spending had brought them very little in the way of success. There were 253 journalists present as well as 78 photographers. This media circus was never really to calm down, and, in the end, would drive Maradona out of the city after six years of triumph and controversy. Maradona’s signing paid off at the box-office. Eighty-six per cent of Napoli’s spectators were season-ticket holders whilst the Argentinian played for them, and a San Paolo ticket was a hot one throughout the second half of the 1980s.

      Napoli’s success and DAMM

      The Napoli team of the 1980s was not just about Maradona, but it was Maradona-dependent. Built on a solid defensive foundation, with Ciro Ferrara at centre-back, the team could also depend on the tireless running of Fernando De Napoli and Salvatore Bagni in midfield and on excellent strikers such as Andrea Carnevale, Bruno Giordano and the Brazilian Careca. This whole unruly bunch was kept in check by managers Ottavio Bianchi (for the first championship) and Alberto Bigon for the second.

      Maradona and the team took time to settle in. In his first season Diego scored fourteen goals and the team finished eighth, in his second year he scored eleven times and Napoli ended up third. From 1987 to 1990, however, Maradona played sublime football, scoring 50 goals in four seasons. Statistics tell us little about little Diego. Maradona’s genius can only really be understood through images – his goals were, like those of Roberto Baggio, rarely dull or ugly – chips from outside the box, perfect free-kicks, mazy dribbles, goals whilst lying on the ground. Maradona was also able to provide numerous passes for others, and he never gave up, even when defenders took lumps out of his stocky legs. The 1990 scudetto team also saw the emergence of a sparkling young talent, who had been plucked from obscurity in Sardinia. His first nickname was MaraZola, but Gianfranco Zola, who played eighteen games that year, would soon be famous in his own right.

      The Party. 1987

      On 10 May 1987, Napoli needed just a draw at home to Fiorentina to win their first scudetto. Carnevale scored for Napoli, and Roberto Baggio struck his first-ever goal in Serie A to equalize in the first half. No further goals were added. During the game, apart from the cheers after Napoli’s goal, the city was as quiet as a grave. Italian anthropologist Amalia Signorelli went for a walk (it was a beautiful day). ‘The world had changed,’ she wrote, ‘the noisiest, most crowded and most chaotic city in Europe was deserted.’¹⁴

      As the final whistle blew, Neapolitans poured onto the streets all over the city, and in cities all over the world. ‘By 7.30 along the sea front…there was a single wave of Napoli flags, a long singing, dancing, jumping blue snake.’¹⁵ Hundreds of buses were blocked in the crowd, with fans dancing on their roofs. Motorbike riders did wheelies all over town. Many revellers were dressed as Maradona, with curly black wigs. An enormous replica trophy was stuck on to a Dante statue. Blue cakes between six and ten metres long were displayed, and then eaten. The omens had been good. Number 43 had come up in the lottery for the Naples wheel (each city has a daily lottery); 43 stands for ‘the god of players’ – Maradona, in other words. A week later, 43 came up again, along with 61 (the number of years it had taken Napoli to win the championship). During the celebrations, Napoli’s fans displayed all the classic traits of what has become known as the Neapolitan ‘character’: irony, parody and a sense of the macabre, obscenity, blasphemy. They also put on a show, and did so knowingly. Already, during the celebrations, illegal VHS cassettes of the same celebrations were being sold on the streets. This was theatre. Neapolitans were being filmed and then buying videos showing themselves celebrating the victory of Napoli.

      Bunting was hung across the claustrophobic streets – the vicoli – of the city centre, and cars were draped in Napoli colours as they honked their way through town. Impromptu street parties went on for days, with pasta and seafood being prepared for all and sundry on massive long tables. Anybody could sit down for a meal. Citizens ‘taxed themselves’ to pay for all this. Fireworks exploded at frequent intervals. Nobody went to work the next day. Famously, someone wrote this graffito on the walls of the city graveyard: ‘You don’t know what you are missing!’ – Guagliu! E che ve sit pers! Pretend funerals were held for Juventus, complete with coffins and black-lined printed ‘death notices’. Napoli’s victory was also the chance of revenge after years of being seen as a poor city full of thieves. ‘May 1987, the other Italy has been defeated, a new empire is born.’ Urban myths circulated concerning the power of Maradona. It was said that 20,000 local government voters had written ‘Viva Maradona’ on their ballot papers, making their votes uncountable. Another improbable myth was that 100 donkeys had been imported from Sardinia for the post-scudetto celebrations. Floats were prepared with Maradona on a throne and Platini or Rummenigge prone at his feet.

      During Maradona’s time in the city, thousands of babies were named ‘Diego’, or even Diega. In one central parish 25 per cent of newly born sons were named Diego. Streets and whole neighbourhoods were given his name and murals sprang up comparing him to the city’s much-loved patron saint, San Gennaro. In one such mural Maradona is depicted in the arms of San Gennaro himself. Many of these murals are now painted over or in a poor state of repair. One of the most interesting and important ‘social centres’ (alternative city spaces) in Naples is called DAMM: Diego Armando Maradona Montesanto.¹⁶ The cult of Diego was (and is) a real cult, combining idolatry, superstition and love. On one website dedicated to Maradona, there is a photo of his baptism. Many writers have stressed СКАЧАТЬ