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Maradona - from todays Guardian
I left Sevilla in June 1993 and returned to Argentina. I was looking for another club, and in the meantime I was just another fan of the national squad. On September 5 I went to the Monumental stadium - wearing the No10 shirt, yes, but only to watch the World Cup qualifier between Argentina and Colombia from the stands with all the other fans.
I walked there from my house in Correa and Libertador with my old man, with my brother-in-law El Morsa, with La Claudia and my agent Marcos Franchi. Argentina had a one-point advantage over Colombia. With just a 1-0 win the tortoise wouldn't be able to get away. But Colombia's goals started coming, one after another, until they scored five. When people started shouting "Colombia, Colombia!", even the Argentinians, I wanted to kill myself.
People were saying, "Come back, Diego!" But I hadn't gone to the game to be asked back, viejo! The stadium was chanting "Maradooo, Maradooo!" But to me it felt like they were insulting me. I was crying because Argentinian football had lost 5-0 and that was a very big step backwards. It nearly knocked us out of the World Cup.
We still had a chance to qualify: we had to play Australia over two legs. I wasn't sure I wanted to be involved but the players and the manager, Coco Basile, asked me to come back. I accepted because of the people, who would have picked me blindfolded.
I had already embarked upon one of my classic recovery plans, using a Chinese method that enabled me to lose 11 kilos in one week. My personal trainer Daniel Cerrini and I had set ourselves the aim of bettering the physical level I'd been at in Mexico '86, and there were times we did three training sessions in one day! I had it clear in my mind: these were the last years of my career, and I wanted to play the best I possibly could.
Everyone was surprised by my physical appearance. I was really thin: I weighed 72 kilos. Richard Gere eat your heart out! Cerrini drove himself crazy but he managed to find the oats I needed for my breakfast every day. The day after my birthday we drew with Australia 1-1. Balbo scored from my cross. It was good for me - I felt like the captain once more. I wore a new armband, blue with the faces of my two daughters on it. And I felt the group was beginning to bond. Two weeks later, on November 17, we won 1-0 at the Monumental. We had qualified, but only just.
Our new home on the outskirts of Boston was a spectacular place, and I felt everything very intensely. I knew this was my last World Cup, maybe the end of my career - I didn't even have a club at that point. But I was full of dreams, as always in a World Cup. I had three under my belt but felt the same sense of responsibility that I had as a first-timer.
When the competition kicked off we were the best team by far. We were a side full of attacking players, so to avoid weakness at the back we shadowed each other. And how it worked! We would all reach the area and that's how I scored against Greece: one touch, tac, tac, tac, like a machine gun, one-two, Redondo, me, golazo, golazo ... That's how we thrashed Greece 4-0 and then turned the Nigerians over 2-1. We were a great team, which is why I'm so bitter. It's a feeling I will carry with me my whole life.
I'll never forget the afternoon of June 25, 1994. Never. I felt I'd had an exceptional game against Nigeria. I was happy. The nurse came to get me at the side of the pitch because I was still celebrating with the crowd, and I didn't suspect anything. Why would I if I was clean, clean? The only thing I did was look up at Claudia and pull a face, as if to say, "Who's this girl?" But it was a gesture between us because it was a woman, not anything else.
I was calm because I had done drugs tests before and during the World Cup, and the results were always OK. I hadn't taken anything. Total abstinence, even from the other stuff, the evil stuff that holds you back. That's why I walked off with that plump little nurse, still celebrating. Why else would I have been laughing? Someone aware they'd screwed up that badly would not have been as happy as I was.
Three days later, I was drinking mate in the car park at our Babson College base. It was hot, as it was every day during that tournament, but nothing bothered us. We were as happy as children. Suddenly, Marcos Franchi turned up with a terrible look on his face. Who died, I thought to myself. "Diego, I need to talk to you for a minute," he said, and he moved me away from the rest of the group. He put his arm on my shoulder and broke the news. "Look, Diego, your drug test against Nigeria has come up positive. But don't worry, the AFA directors are handling things really well."
I hardly heard the last bit, I'd turned round looking for Claudia ... I could hardly make her out, my eyes were full of tears. My voice broke when I said to her: "We're leaving the World Cup." And then I started sobbing like a child. We walked away towards my room, and once inside I exploded. I started punching the walls and shouting: "I busted my balls! I worked my arse off like never before and now this!"
None of the people with me dared say a word. Not Claudia, not Marcos, not my poor old masseur Carmando. I didn't believe in anyone or anything. I didn't believe the directors would handle it. The world had caved in on top of me.
We were supposed to travel to Dallas for the match against Bulgaria, and it broke my heart to know I wasn't going to be on the pitch. I didn't dare say anything to anybody. Maybe deep inside I held some hope the directors would be able to do something, that they would realise I'd been training three times a day.
I led the way into our Dallas hotel. The cameras pointed at me but that's how it always was. Nobody knew anything yet and it was a weird and dreadful sensation. I could see the journalists smiling: many had gone out on a limb to defend me in the past, and they were enjoying this revenge as much as I was. I was in so much pain carrying what I knew inside.
That afternoon we went to recce the stadium, the way you always do in a World Cup the day before a game. I went along but I was somewhere else. I knew I would not be there the following day. I didn't even touch a ball, didn't bother to play keepy-uppy. I went up to a goal and stood there, holding on to the net like a prisoner.
As we started to leave, I noticed a commotion among the journalists who were up in the stands. They'd heard, it was obvious, and I hurried my steps. I heard them shouting: "Diego, just one question! Maradona, over here please!" I didn't look over, I just raised my arm and waved goodbye.
That night the hotel lobby was hell. Everyone had heard by then. The directors were still negotiating but at the end of the day, as I was trying to fall asleep, Marcos knocked on my door. "Diego, it's all over. The control test is also positive." The AFA had decided to remove my name from the official list. I no longer belonged to the national squad. I shouted out: "Help me! I'm frightened of doing something stupid!"
When daylight finally came I hadn't slept a wink. Franchi had spent the whole night with me, so had my physio Fernando Signorini. The squad left for the stadium but I stayed behind. I wanted to explain everything to the Argentinian people. The journalist Adrian Paenza was there with a Channel 13 crew. We went to Franchi's room and I sat on a bed, the one nearest the window. I took a deep breath, cleared my throat, and told them I was ready. What I said can be summarised in a phrase I can easily repeat: they cut my legs off.
I'd prepared so well for that World Cup, I was like never before. They were hitting me over the head just when I was beginning to emerge again. I remember I said: "The day I took drugs, I went to the judge and said, 'I took drugs. How much is the fine? What's the penalty?' and I paid it. Then I had two hard years of going every three or four months to have a test under a microscope. So I don't understand this. I don't understand because they have no case. They've made a mistake."
I swore and swore again I hadn't taken any performance-enhancing substance. I hadn't taken drugs to play or run better. I swore on my daughters' lives and I still do. I was convinced I'd already paid my dues but it seems Fifa wanted more of my blood.
I heard that my TV interview was broadcast alongside the images of the players singing the anthem before our match against Bulgaria. I didn't see it, and would never dare watch it now. I bore enough at the time and don't know how I managed.
I went to watch the game in another room with a small group of journalist friends who'd stayed behind to see what I did. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed. The TV was less than a metre away. The game kicked off but I didn't shout once, never moved. It wasn't me watching that game: my jersey was there on the pitch, that's where I should have been. My flag was also there, the one my daughters had given to me and I had passed on to Caniggia with all my heart.
My lasting memory of the Bulgaria match is what Redondo told me afterwards with tears in his eyes: "I was looking for you on the pitch and I couldn't find you ... I looked for you the whole match." We'd become a team that knew each other by heart. We all felt the same way about the game: we played as if it was a kickabout.
I only lasted 25 minutes, no more. I made my excuses and went to my room. I just wanted to get out of that place and had a flight back to Boston, to meet Claudia and the girls, at five in the morning. I rang Claudia and asked how they were. They'd asked some questions and she told them I had been given a medicine, which is why I hadn't been able to play. I got a lump in my throat and hung up. I wanted to hang myself. I felt more alone than ever.
The AFA president Julio Grondona's attitude, face to face, was excellent. But later I felt he wasn't able to defend me the way I'd have liked. Firstly because what happened here was not a cocaine relapse. And secondly because it had been an innocent mistake by my trainer, Cerrini. We had run out of the supplements I was taking in Argentina and he bought the same stuff in the US - but the US version contained a small percentage of ephedrine. Instead of Ripped Fast, which is what I had run out of, Cerrini bought Ripped Fuel, which could also be bought over the counter and was practically identical. But the Fuel version had some herbs that produced ephedrine. A tiny bit. Doctor Lentini carried out tests in Buenos Aires and established it could cause the appearance of the substances that were found in my system.
I also believed in Eduardo De Luca, the Argentine member of the South American football confederation. I believed he had a chance to save me because that's what he told me when we had a chat once. It was just a matter of persuading them I hadn't meant to take advantage.
But those in power will never accept this from me. Why? Because they're dirty - they're immersed in shit up to here. They robbed a country of its hopes and dreams, just as they robbed a 34-year-old man who had made an enormous effort and was fit. Who could imagine I would replace cocaine with ephedrine?
I'd asked God time and again for everything to work out well but ... either God had nothing to do with it or he was thinking about something else. Otherwise he'd have managed to get Blatter, Havelange, Johansson, all those dinosaurs, to forgive me. They spoke of fair play but they were forgetting a human being. I don't believe it was the biggest screw-up of my life; I take it on board but as someone else's mistake. I was taken out of the World Cup because I was given ephedrine, and ephedrine is legal, or ought to be.
Even OJ Simpson was against me in the US. The only support I received was from Coco Basile and the players. No one else. But nothing was clear at the end and there's still an ongoing inquiry. Maybe I'll continue to fight - it's never too late. I'd like to get hold of all the evidence - I will do it one day - and then go to Fifa. I may be 60 years old but I'll go and kick down the door, and find out the truth.
Maradona on ... the Mafia
I admit Naples was a seductive world. It was something new for us Argentinians: the mafia. It was fascinating to watch and of course they offered me things, but I never wanted to accept them - because of the old dictum that first they give and then they ask. They offered me visits to fan clubs, gave me watches, but if I saw it wasn't all above board I didn't accept. Even so it was an incredible time - whenever I went to one of those clubs they gave me gold Rolexes, cars ... They gave me the first Volvo 900 to come into Italy and I asked them: "But what do I have to do?" They said: "Nothing, just have your picture taken."
... speaking at the Oxford Union
People think us footballers are ignorant. The best reply was given not by me but by the prestigious Oxford University. In November 1995 I was invited to speak at the union there, and the recognition from such an eminent place really was one of the greatest joys of my life. For me it was a challenge, a real challenge: I was reading in public for the first time since my primary school days.
Later, someone threw me a golf ball and asked me to play keepy-uppy. I was guarded at first. I said that it needed to be done with trainers rather than the fancy shiny shoes I was wearing, but I gave it a go. I lifted it with my left foot and I kicked it once, twice, three times, 10 times, on and on ... and the terraces came down. They were shouting "Diegouuu, Diegouuu" in an English accent, and my socks were charmed off. I returned to Buenos Aires feeling I could fly.
· Extracted from El Diego: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Footballer, by Diego Maradona, published by Yellow Jersey Press at £16.99. © Diego Armando Maradona 2000. Translation copyright: Marcela Mora Y Araujo 2004.
I left Sevilla in June 1993 and returned to Argentina. I was looking for another club, and in the meantime I was just another fan of the national squad. On September 5 I went to the Monumental stadium - wearing the No10 shirt, yes, but only to watch the World Cup qualifier between Argentina and Colombia from the stands with all the other fans.
I walked there from my house in Correa and Libertador with my old man, with my brother-in-law El Morsa, with La Claudia and my agent Marcos Franchi. Argentina had a one-point advantage over Colombia. With just a 1-0 win the tortoise wouldn't be able to get away. But Colombia's goals started coming, one after another, until they scored five. When people started shouting "Colombia, Colombia!", even the Argentinians, I wanted to kill myself.
People were saying, "Come back, Diego!" But I hadn't gone to the game to be asked back, viejo! The stadium was chanting "Maradooo, Maradooo!" But to me it felt like they were insulting me. I was crying because Argentinian football had lost 5-0 and that was a very big step backwards. It nearly knocked us out of the World Cup.
We still had a chance to qualify: we had to play Australia over two legs. I wasn't sure I wanted to be involved but the players and the manager, Coco Basile, asked me to come back. I accepted because of the people, who would have picked me blindfolded.
I had already embarked upon one of my classic recovery plans, using a Chinese method that enabled me to lose 11 kilos in one week. My personal trainer Daniel Cerrini and I had set ourselves the aim of bettering the physical level I'd been at in Mexico '86, and there were times we did three training sessions in one day! I had it clear in my mind: these were the last years of my career, and I wanted to play the best I possibly could.
Everyone was surprised by my physical appearance. I was really thin: I weighed 72 kilos. Richard Gere eat your heart out! Cerrini drove himself crazy but he managed to find the oats I needed for my breakfast every day. The day after my birthday we drew with Australia 1-1. Balbo scored from my cross. It was good for me - I felt like the captain once more. I wore a new armband, blue with the faces of my two daughters on it. And I felt the group was beginning to bond. Two weeks later, on November 17, we won 1-0 at the Monumental. We had qualified, but only just.
Our new home on the outskirts of Boston was a spectacular place, and I felt everything very intensely. I knew this was my last World Cup, maybe the end of my career - I didn't even have a club at that point. But I was full of dreams, as always in a World Cup. I had three under my belt but felt the same sense of responsibility that I had as a first-timer.
When the competition kicked off we were the best team by far. We were a side full of attacking players, so to avoid weakness at the back we shadowed each other. And how it worked! We would all reach the area and that's how I scored against Greece: one touch, tac, tac, tac, like a machine gun, one-two, Redondo, me, golazo, golazo ... That's how we thrashed Greece 4-0 and then turned the Nigerians over 2-1. We were a great team, which is why I'm so bitter. It's a feeling I will carry with me my whole life.
I'll never forget the afternoon of June 25, 1994. Never. I felt I'd had an exceptional game against Nigeria. I was happy. The nurse came to get me at the side of the pitch because I was still celebrating with the crowd, and I didn't suspect anything. Why would I if I was clean, clean? The only thing I did was look up at Claudia and pull a face, as if to say, "Who's this girl?" But it was a gesture between us because it was a woman, not anything else.
I was calm because I had done drugs tests before and during the World Cup, and the results were always OK. I hadn't taken anything. Total abstinence, even from the other stuff, the evil stuff that holds you back. That's why I walked off with that plump little nurse, still celebrating. Why else would I have been laughing? Someone aware they'd screwed up that badly would not have been as happy as I was.
Three days later, I was drinking mate in the car park at our Babson College base. It was hot, as it was every day during that tournament, but nothing bothered us. We were as happy as children. Suddenly, Marcos Franchi turned up with a terrible look on his face. Who died, I thought to myself. "Diego, I need to talk to you for a minute," he said, and he moved me away from the rest of the group. He put his arm on my shoulder and broke the news. "Look, Diego, your drug test against Nigeria has come up positive. But don't worry, the AFA directors are handling things really well."
I hardly heard the last bit, I'd turned round looking for Claudia ... I could hardly make her out, my eyes were full of tears. My voice broke when I said to her: "We're leaving the World Cup." And then I started sobbing like a child. We walked away towards my room, and once inside I exploded. I started punching the walls and shouting: "I busted my balls! I worked my arse off like never before and now this!"
None of the people with me dared say a word. Not Claudia, not Marcos, not my poor old masseur Carmando. I didn't believe in anyone or anything. I didn't believe the directors would handle it. The world had caved in on top of me.
We were supposed to travel to Dallas for the match against Bulgaria, and it broke my heart to know I wasn't going to be on the pitch. I didn't dare say anything to anybody. Maybe deep inside I held some hope the directors would be able to do something, that they would realise I'd been training three times a day.
I led the way into our Dallas hotel. The cameras pointed at me but that's how it always was. Nobody knew anything yet and it was a weird and dreadful sensation. I could see the journalists smiling: many had gone out on a limb to defend me in the past, and they were enjoying this revenge as much as I was. I was in so much pain carrying what I knew inside.
That afternoon we went to recce the stadium, the way you always do in a World Cup the day before a game. I went along but I was somewhere else. I knew I would not be there the following day. I didn't even touch a ball, didn't bother to play keepy-uppy. I went up to a goal and stood there, holding on to the net like a prisoner.
As we started to leave, I noticed a commotion among the journalists who were up in the stands. They'd heard, it was obvious, and I hurried my steps. I heard them shouting: "Diego, just one question! Maradona, over here please!" I didn't look over, I just raised my arm and waved goodbye.
That night the hotel lobby was hell. Everyone had heard by then. The directors were still negotiating but at the end of the day, as I was trying to fall asleep, Marcos knocked on my door. "Diego, it's all over. The control test is also positive." The AFA had decided to remove my name from the official list. I no longer belonged to the national squad. I shouted out: "Help me! I'm frightened of doing something stupid!"
When daylight finally came I hadn't slept a wink. Franchi had spent the whole night with me, so had my physio Fernando Signorini. The squad left for the stadium but I stayed behind. I wanted to explain everything to the Argentinian people. The journalist Adrian Paenza was there with a Channel 13 crew. We went to Franchi's room and I sat on a bed, the one nearest the window. I took a deep breath, cleared my throat, and told them I was ready. What I said can be summarised in a phrase I can easily repeat: they cut my legs off.
I'd prepared so well for that World Cup, I was like never before. They were hitting me over the head just when I was beginning to emerge again. I remember I said: "The day I took drugs, I went to the judge and said, 'I took drugs. How much is the fine? What's the penalty?' and I paid it. Then I had two hard years of going every three or four months to have a test under a microscope. So I don't understand this. I don't understand because they have no case. They've made a mistake."
I swore and swore again I hadn't taken any performance-enhancing substance. I hadn't taken drugs to play or run better. I swore on my daughters' lives and I still do. I was convinced I'd already paid my dues but it seems Fifa wanted more of my blood.
I heard that my TV interview was broadcast alongside the images of the players singing the anthem before our match against Bulgaria. I didn't see it, and would never dare watch it now. I bore enough at the time and don't know how I managed.
I went to watch the game in another room with a small group of journalist friends who'd stayed behind to see what I did. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed. The TV was less than a metre away. The game kicked off but I didn't shout once, never moved. It wasn't me watching that game: my jersey was there on the pitch, that's where I should have been. My flag was also there, the one my daughters had given to me and I had passed on to Caniggia with all my heart.
My lasting memory of the Bulgaria match is what Redondo told me afterwards with tears in his eyes: "I was looking for you on the pitch and I couldn't find you ... I looked for you the whole match." We'd become a team that knew each other by heart. We all felt the same way about the game: we played as if it was a kickabout.
I only lasted 25 minutes, no more. I made my excuses and went to my room. I just wanted to get out of that place and had a flight back to Boston, to meet Claudia and the girls, at five in the morning. I rang Claudia and asked how they were. They'd asked some questions and she told them I had been given a medicine, which is why I hadn't been able to play. I got a lump in my throat and hung up. I wanted to hang myself. I felt more alone than ever.
The AFA president Julio Grondona's attitude, face to face, was excellent. But later I felt he wasn't able to defend me the way I'd have liked. Firstly because what happened here was not a cocaine relapse. And secondly because it had been an innocent mistake by my trainer, Cerrini. We had run out of the supplements I was taking in Argentina and he bought the same stuff in the US - but the US version contained a small percentage of ephedrine. Instead of Ripped Fast, which is what I had run out of, Cerrini bought Ripped Fuel, which could also be bought over the counter and was practically identical. But the Fuel version had some herbs that produced ephedrine. A tiny bit. Doctor Lentini carried out tests in Buenos Aires and established it could cause the appearance of the substances that were found in my system.
I also believed in Eduardo De Luca, the Argentine member of the South American football confederation. I believed he had a chance to save me because that's what he told me when we had a chat once. It was just a matter of persuading them I hadn't meant to take advantage.
But those in power will never accept this from me. Why? Because they're dirty - they're immersed in shit up to here. They robbed a country of its hopes and dreams, just as they robbed a 34-year-old man who had made an enormous effort and was fit. Who could imagine I would replace cocaine with ephedrine?
I'd asked God time and again for everything to work out well but ... either God had nothing to do with it or he was thinking about something else. Otherwise he'd have managed to get Blatter, Havelange, Johansson, all those dinosaurs, to forgive me. They spoke of fair play but they were forgetting a human being. I don't believe it was the biggest screw-up of my life; I take it on board but as someone else's mistake. I was taken out of the World Cup because I was given ephedrine, and ephedrine is legal, or ought to be.
Even OJ Simpson was against me in the US. The only support I received was from Coco Basile and the players. No one else. But nothing was clear at the end and there's still an ongoing inquiry. Maybe I'll continue to fight - it's never too late. I'd like to get hold of all the evidence - I will do it one day - and then go to Fifa. I may be 60 years old but I'll go and kick down the door, and find out the truth.
Maradona on ... the Mafia
I admit Naples was a seductive world. It was something new for us Argentinians: the mafia. It was fascinating to watch and of course they offered me things, but I never wanted to accept them - because of the old dictum that first they give and then they ask. They offered me visits to fan clubs, gave me watches, but if I saw it wasn't all above board I didn't accept. Even so it was an incredible time - whenever I went to one of those clubs they gave me gold Rolexes, cars ... They gave me the first Volvo 900 to come into Italy and I asked them: "But what do I have to do?" They said: "Nothing, just have your picture taken."
... speaking at the Oxford Union
People think us footballers are ignorant. The best reply was given not by me but by the prestigious Oxford University. In November 1995 I was invited to speak at the union there, and the recognition from such an eminent place really was one of the greatest joys of my life. For me it was a challenge, a real challenge: I was reading in public for the first time since my primary school days.
Later, someone threw me a golf ball and asked me to play keepy-uppy. I was guarded at first. I said that it needed to be done with trainers rather than the fancy shiny shoes I was wearing, but I gave it a go. I lifted it with my left foot and I kicked it once, twice, three times, 10 times, on and on ... and the terraces came down. They were shouting "Diegouuu, Diegouuu" in an English accent, and my socks were charmed off. I returned to Buenos Aires feeling I could fly.
· Extracted from El Diego: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Footballer, by Diego Maradona, published by Yellow Jersey Press at £16.99. © Diego Armando Maradona 2000. Translation copyright: Marcela Mora Y Araujo 2004.
