Darby Jean #61 | Maradona special

Maradona.

When I heard the name for the first time I was seven or eight.

“He’s the best soccer player in the world,” someone said in the yard.

“Ok.” I thought. I’d never had someone described to me like that before.

The best soccer player in the world?

Maradona.

It’s a simple name- lyric and rhythmic, but also dark in a way where, had the man not looked like he did, had he been someone or something else, it could have meant something entirely different.

“Maradona is the best soccer player in the world."

“Don’t go down that road. Maradona’s down there.”

Do you see how it shifts? From light to dark.

Maradona.

Maradona has only ever been the best soccer player in the world to me. For as long as I’ve been alive there’s never been a debate. Not really. Not with anyone I’ve talked to.

He was a marauding, inspiring player full of swagger and deception. He could also be entirely disappointing. I don’t know much of the turmoil of his life. Some of the stories are scary. The trouble he was in. The people with whom he found that trouble. Maybe his name did shift from light to dark.

Maradona.

Just the sound of it is definitive. An avatar of a greatness with no asterisks, and no confusion over if or when or why. The evidence is there. Look at the photos. Watch the films.

And listen closely for the name when it is sung. With joy, retrieval and hope. Sometimes in sadness. But rarely in fear. Unless that fear was around his departure, which I'm afraid is upon us now.