team has gone into financial and on-the-pitch free-fall since the late 1990s. Still, for key matches, the stadium is often a sell-out and local TV stations devote hours and hours of coverage to their local team. The city can still rally around when times are hard. In 2003 some 70,000 turned out for a Serie B relegation battle and the same number attended a Serie C playoff in 2005. Nonetheless, frustration with the side’s recent poor showing has often descended into violence. Players have been physically attacked or threatened on numerous occasions in recent times, most seriously when Napoli defender Francesco Baldini was beaten with iron bars after being followed home by masked fans on motorbikes in November 2002. In February 2004 midfielder Renato Olive was surrounded by five young men who threatened him with a knife and told him that ‘If you don’t win against Messina, we’ll come and look for you again’. After serious flooding damaged the crumbling and dangerous San Paolo in September 2001, opening up huge holes in the concrete, Napoli were forced to play their home games in smaller stadiums all over the south.
Diego, meanwhile, often appears on Italian TV these days, where he is something of a figure of fun: fat, tattooed, a friend of Fidel Castro. A TV comic does quite a good impression of him, but the real thing is much more tragic. Napoli fans always ask him when he is coming back, but only a madman, and Maradona is not mad, would have taken on Napoli at that point in their history. Just when the situation seemed hopeless, salvation arrived for the club in the form of the cinema magnate Aurelio De Laurentis, who sorted out the disastrous financial situation of the team and managed to make them serious competitors for promotion back to the top division. In June 2007 after a dramatic last game in Genoa, Napoli returned to Serie A. Predictably, this news was followed by street parties and celebrations, and not just in Naples.
Disintegration
‘Inside every fat man, they say, there is a thin man trying to get out. In the case of Maradona, it seems, there is an even fatter man trying to get in’
MARTIN AMIS19
The early part of the twenty-first century saw Maradona’s fortunes take another dip. Separated from his wife, he roamed around the world, staying for a time in Cuba, where he tried to break his drugs habit once again. His fortune, it appeared, was all gone. Maradona blamed his ex-agent, Guillermo Coppola. Others claimed that all of his entourage had wanted a piece of him. Grotesquely fat, he went along with a series of humiliating requests in Argentina, such as the opening of supermarkets. He took up a regular spot on the popular if squalid Italian TV football-argument show, Monday’s Trial, and had an enormous likeness of Che Guevara tattooed on his upper arm. From Cuba, he attacked George Bush and the ‘war on terrorism’. The ‘Cuban Cure’, however, did not seem to have done the trick.
In April 2004 Maradona was taken to hospital in Argentina with serious heart failure. He had played golf at night and then fallen asleep, and vomit had ended up in his lungs. Traces of cocaine – enough ‘to kill a man’ – were found in his blood. His heart, the doctors said, was only half-working. Diego was put on a respirator. The Italian press drew comparisons with the sad demise of 34-year-old cyclist Marco Pantani, who had been found dead in a Rimini hotel room only weeks earlier. Pantani was also a cocaine addict and, in the end, the drug had killed him. At the age of 43, Maradona was fighting for his life. Fans and well-wishers gathered outside the hospital whilst Argentinian TV showed his goals again and again. Diego was described as ‘a little less than a god’. In Naples, shopkeepers set up message boards with photos of Diego; fans left notes stuck on the wall: ‘we will never forget you’; ‘Diego forever’; ‘come back and help us dream’. A makeshift altar was assembled, with a scudetto sign, kitsch fake pillars, Napoli colours and a photo of a young, thinner Maradona. Fans touched the picture, crossed themselves, and prayed. Italian journalists wrote that it was ‘a miracle’ that Maradona was still alive and that he had ‘the heart of an eighty-year-old’. Maradona survived, but only just, and the headlong drive towards self-destruction of this footballing genius, the King of Naples, continued apace, watched over by a voracious media machine. Just when he seemed to be finished, however, Maradona recovered, for the umpteenth time. He had an operation to lose weight, visited Napoli for an emotional testimonial match for his friend Ciro Ferrara, and even returned to the world of football, taking over as vice-president of Boca Juniors in 2005. A post from which he resigned in 2006.
His reputation also improved. La Gazzetta dello Sport produced – with Gianni Minà – a 10-part DVD history dedicated to Maradona’s life and career. The success of this initiative showed how the hatred Diego inspired in the 1980s amongst many Italian fans had dissipated. In 2007 a feature film appeared called La mano di dio, directed by Marco Risi. But Maradona’s miraculous recovery was short-lived. In 2007 he was back in hospital in Argentina, and there were even rumours that he had died, and he was later admitted to a psychiatric clinic after being diagnosed as an alcoholic. Meanwhile, his son Diego Jr decided to take Diego Sr to court over non-payment of maintenance. The media would not have long to wait for the next twist in the Maradona saga.
CHAPTER 5 At the Back. Defenders and Defensive Football in Italy
The Defensive Mentality
My sports teacher at school was called Mr Campbell. He was a good teacher, enthusiastic and tireless (although I shall never forgive him for putting me in goal at the age of nine), but he was hardly at the cutting-edge of modern football tactics. The first thing he told us in training was that we should remember this phrase: ‘If in doubt, kick it out’. That was the motto our defence was to live by. Get rid of the ball. Kick it as high and far away from your goal as you can, and quickly. If it goes out, it doesn’t matter – all the better. Now when Italian teams have been accused, ever since the 1950s, of being defensive, this accusation has usually been a false one. Italian teams have not been defensive. They have, quite simply, been much better at defending than other European teams. Italian defenders can all trap the ball, dribble and pass. They anticipate where the ball is going to go and they look up before deciding where to put it. If they are in doubt, they do not ‘kick it out’. Kicking it out is their last option, not their first. Bad clearances are usually whistled by Italian crowds, as are skied passes – known as bell towers, or campanili. Italian defenders are also, usually, faster and more tactically aware than defenders in other countries. Most central defenders in the Italian lower divisions would not be out of place in Premiership teams. Added to these qualities has been the extremely high technical proficiency of Italian goalkeepers. In the 1990s Italian football produced a number of world-class keepers.1 Any one of these players would have been a fixture for England in the same period.
Italian teams valued possession. They played out of defence, either with care and control (if they were winning) or with devastating speed and accuracy (if they needed a goal). In the highly technical world of Italian youth football, goalkeepers are often banned from kicking the ball out (by their own managers). They must throw or pass it to a nearby player and play out from the back.
Possession football is also not necessarily defensive. The great Brazilian teams have always kept the ball as long as possible. The fastest way towards goalscoring is rarely the fastest way of moving the ball towards the opposite goal – the long ball. Italian teams used the long ball – but usually with accurate passes out to the wings, and rarely through punts down the centre of the pitch. The flick-on was not seen as a key offensive weapon in Italy. Italians attacked less, but they attacked far more effectively – and in greater numbers. There is nothing more beautiful in football than a swift, clinical counter-attack. Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal teams of the 1990s – widely praised for their attacking style – were counter-attackers who revelled in any space given to them by the opposition.
Defensive
