Naples was a crazy city – they were as crazy as me – soccer was life itself.
Diego Maradona
Doubtless I won’t win many friends by confessing that football interests me approximately as much as do quadratic equations. However, there was a time when football did register meaningfully on my young consciousness (but algebra was already detested). This was during the 1980’s – a time when one man’s name was, like an incantation, on the lips of every scruffy schoolboy kicking a ball around a concrete playground in the afternoon drizzle while inwardly basking in glory on the pitch at a World Cup final : Diego Maradona.
So encountering the cult of Maradona in Napoli this year carried a certain resonance for even me, this apparently irredeemable apostate from the religion. One cannot but be impressed by the sheer intensity and fervour of the Neapolitan devotion to Diego Maradona. To say that he has become deified in this city is quite simply no exaggeration. Of course wherever there lies idealisation then demonisation cannot be far away and certainly Diego suffered his fair share of this, but following his death, the man’s promotion to sainthood seems near complete. I have no idea what the church itself makes of this phenomenon but I suspect they’d be wise not to oppose it for it is an unstoppable force. Maradona’s impact on Napoli through his contribution to restoring its pride and dignity in the face of unconscionable prejudice and discrimination was immense and for this he will never be forgotten. Viva Napoli. Viva Maradona.
Addendum: While more muted, the nearby Sorrentinos also display their gratitude to El Diego. But as will become clearer in a forthcoming Christmas special – in the strange miniature world of the Presepi, Little Sorrento (pictured above) itself exists only within the infinite regress of the dark, narrow streets of ancient Napoli.
*With grateful acknowledgment to a fellow miniaturist – the proprietor of the Sorrento Experience Museum. Sorrento. Campania.