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A Football Fan’s Tribute to Diego Maradona
Life is like a 90-minute game of football
I was too young to watch your mazy dribbles, your vicious strikes, or your controversial goal against England in the 1986 FIFA World Cup.
But from all accounts, you were a real baller. “The football stuck to his magnetic left foot as he ran at defenders and missed crunching tackles from midfielders,” a commentator once remarked about you on TV.
“You only have to watch Messi at work, but with more violent tackles flying in to picture how Diego operated,” a friend joked recently about you, Diego. But he was right.
You gave a different meaning to a left-footed number 10.
Be so good, and people will always remember you
As pre-teens running around on fields more brown than green — sweat dripping from our glistening dark-chocolate bodies as we slugged it out in five-asides and neighborhood tournaments—we named ourselves after some of our favorite players, and you were one of them, even though you had retired.
The few highlights of you we occasionally caught on TV were good enough to get the lefties among us calling dibs on who had the naming rights to Maradona for the day.
