Serie A: The Naples league and the World Cup in Qatar, the ‘miracles’ to sanctify San Maradona | Series A 2021

The Neapolitan team achieved the Scudetto 33 years later, the third after the two achieved with the Argentine in their ranks, after drawing with Udinese. The first was achieved after Argentina won the 1986 World Cup.

Maradona did not play, but anyone would say so. The Argentine was once again the protagonist of the third Scudetto for Naples, the first without him on the pitch, and after 33 years of waiting. For Maradona, most of the banners, photos and offerings have been hanging for weeks from the power lines and balconies of the Spanish Quarter. The title that was going to be held last Sunday against the Salernitana, like a big day for San Diego Armando, has ended up becoming a novena, with hundreds of parishioners paying their respects every day, in a loud pilgrimage to the Largo Maradona, the square from the highest part of Via De Deo, until reaching the best-known mural of the Argentine star, painted by his countryman Francisco Bosoletti.

those of Luciano Spalletti have been holding the title in their pocket for months, but they have spent all of April joking about losing it, while the Police assembled and disassembled devices, closed the center, or prohibited the sale of flares and glass. In the entire season they have only given up twelve points, five of them last month.

The big party was prepared for Sunday if they beat Salernitana, but they tied. Then on Wednesday if Lazio didn’t beat Sassuolo, but they did. And finally if they achieved at least one point this Thursday in the Udinese field, and they did. The party in the city will continue until this Sunday, with Naples-Fiorentina, taking advantage of the fact that the two have the remaining five games left over.

“Maradona is always close to the team,” said Spalletti. Since November the Diego Armando Maradona stadium, who after his death in November 2020 ousted San Paolo, has a new statue of 10, which the squad has been venerating asking for his intercession for the miracle of the Scudetto.

Nobody expected that Naples would even fight for the title the same year that they let escape Insigne, Mertens, Fabin Ruz, Koulibaly and Milik. With a box of 80 million euros Of Lawrence He had no plans to spend on a macro production. And he brought in a Korean defender from the Turkish League, min jae kim, recovered the loaned Raspadoriwas brought Youngthe son of Simeone from Verona, and especially a 22-year-old Georgian, Khvicha Kvaratskheliawhich already shares murals in the center to the right of Maradona, and next to which the Nigerian has thrived To install Victor Osimhen.

The first time that Naples won the title was in the 86/87 season, just when Argentina had just won the World Cup, and it has been like that again. Quilmes’ announcement of support for the Argentina team before the World Cup in Qatar I played with the coincidences between this World Cup and the one in 1986. What if the final of the two editions was played at the same time, what if it rained on Christmas before those two World Cups, what if Canada had not qualified for a World Cup since 1986, what if Chile did not qualify in either of those two editions? . And at the end the memory of Maradona: “But in 1986 we had the best in the world”, some friends finish while having a few beers, before remembering Messi. Joining Naples to this succession of coincidences was already too much, but that’s how it has been.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints demands two miracles before raising a procedure that would go to an Argentine Pope, but that is something that has never worried Maradona’s faithful, who already cultivated dozens of shrines in his memory during his lifetime. , prayers, statues, stamps and even his own parody religion in the Maradonian Church. The holy Maradona appears in the shop windows of the pastry shops in the center of Naples, or when lowering a blind, or on a black and white wall as a child, like a spectral apparition. In the Nilo bar he has an altar with a lock of hair, as in the cathedral there is a reliquary with the blood of San Gennaro.

“Maradona was not born (nor did he die) a saint: he was built in life. Therein lies the similarity with the rest of the popular saints, but also the difference: Maradona is a saint canonized before he died,” says Gabriela Saidn in the book Supergod. The construction of Maradona as a lay saint.

In closed for footballthe posthumous testaments of Eduardo Galeanorecounts: “Diego Armando Maradona was adored not only for his prodigious juggling but also because he was a dirty, sinful god, the most humane of gods. Anyone could recognize in him a walking synthesis of human weaknesses, or at least masculine: womanizer, glutton, drunkard, cheater, liar, braggart, irresponsible. But the gods do not retire, no matter how human they are. He was never able to return to the anonymous crowd from which he came. Fame, which had saved him from misery, made him a prisoner.”

Maradona could have even achieved a hat trick from heaven, counting on the fact that just before the World Cup in Qatar, Boca Junior won the Argentine league. Though his brilliant season in the heavens is marred by the defeat of Naples in the Champions League against Milan, ranked fifth, which has deprived them of being in the first semifinals in their history, after an impeccable run to the quarterfinals, and as the tournament’s top scorer team. To improve himself, the Argentine counts eternity as an ally.