Debunking a legend

A picture says a thousand words. And a hundred words can surely suffice a major distortion or in this case, an extreme hyperbole.

Mark my words, Maradona was, is and will be regarded by people all over the world as the greatest footballer to have ever dribbled anything that remotely looked like a sphere (from footballs to golf balls). In an age when media was yet to make its forays into creating the best footballer of all time every 5 years, amongst teams that have hardly any other player worth remembering, and at the world’s biggest stages, Maradona was unsurpassed. He was the exemplaire par excellence.

“Maradona didn’t invent the art of dribbling but he took it to its highest level. Then, once inside the penalty area, he didn’t like to wallop his shots at goal. His art was more subtle. He would stick out his toe and poke the ball into the corner. Or he would chip the shot like a golfer playing a sand-wedge, always in control of the ball. Even in the last World Cup, when he had metamorphosed into the role of Argentina’s manager, he could be seen on the training ground curling free-kick after free-kick into the top corner – using a ball that the players half his age would come to detest because they could not control its trajectory.

At his pomp, it was a form of torture for opponents. The showman Maradona would look one way and play the ball the other. Every playground show-off can do the tricks these days, the keepie-ups and the juggling – but Maradona invented half the moves. He would do it sitting down or on his back. Or doing press-ups. He did it with a tennis ball. Or an apple. You’d have trusted him with an egg.”

This photograph shown above is considered by many (and that includes yours truly) to be the most iconic photograph in the history of football. It shows Maradona in the 1982 Argentina vs Belgium World Cup match. It shows the power that a magician exerts over mere mortals.

Watch the photograph again – “Diego Maradona with the ball at his feet, confronting, teasing, mesmerising, bewitching, persecuting the Belgian side in the 1982 World Cup finals. There is one of him, and six of them. But they don’t know whether to move forward, stay where they are or retreat. The ball is on Maradona’s left boot. Diego Armando Maradona. The God of Football”

Understand it – ” From a tactical point of view, the number six, Franky Vercauteren, is looking to track back and support his full back. From his position he’s trying to steer Maradona down the line and prevent him from coming aside and hurting them. It is also possible to justify the position of the the number 10 Ludo Coeck, who is cutting off a route inside for Maradona. After that it is quite clear that tactics, formation and indeed common sense have gone out the window, they’ve all been replaced with the blind fear that only the great players can inspire in an opposition team. At the point this photo was taken fifty percent of the Argentinian side were umarked in vast tracts of the Nou Camp, ready to take full advantage of the situation created by the simpe presence of Maradona.”

Engulf yourselves in the sheer genius of the man just as I had been over the last couple of years.

Two nights to the day before I am putting this words down, I was frantically binging and trying to download a hi-resolution copy of this photograph as I proceeded to explain a friend how and why this photograph is poetry to the eyes of the football fan.

Having said that though, as I stayed up late yesterday night, it suddenly dawned upon me, there must have been a video of this iconic match. And then, I found it on youtube. As I began to avidly play the whole highlights of the match with the sheer anticipation that I might be able to catch a glimpse of the iconic moment, something caught me unawares.

Watch the video below from 1:15 on. Notice the freekick. The ball was laid off to Maradona instead of being taken for a scoring or assisting shot. And the wall was just reacting to the play.

As I replayed that part of the video again, I was flabber stuck. This was it. Wrongly phrased. Is this it. Is this what the picture had been showing us all along. Is this more a case of the right photograph at the right angle at the right moment and not the moment of genius that we have all been made to believe for so long.

It was calamity. It was catastrophe. It was the apocalypse itself. How could it have been thus? The Belgian defenders who had been seemingly bewitched by the sheer presence of the man were actually reacting to the play and breaking up the wall.

Maradona remains God. The photograph still is iconic. But somewhere, deep with in, I am still trying to reconcile myself to the fact that such a insipid play has been the truth behind such an iconic picture.