Diego Maradona, football legand, dies aged 60

The Show Time/source the guardian

Argentina, Naples, and the world of football were in mourning on Wednesday at the death of Diego Maradona, in many people’s eyes the greatest player of all time, following a heart attack. He was 60. The Argentinian president Alberto Fernández, who declared three days of national mourning, said that Maradona had taken his country to the “highest of the world” with his virtuoso performances in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. “You made us immensely happy,” he wrote. “You were the greatest of all. Thanks for having existed, Diego. We will miss you all our lives.”

When his death was announced, some newscasters in Argentina could not hold back the tears. “Part of our childhood has died,” said one presenter on the TV news channel C5N. “I thought he could never die,” said another.

Having made his professional debut at 15, he moved to Barcelona for a world record fee at 21. But it was at Napoli that he elevated his game towards the gods - but it came at a price: the frequent assaults from other players meant he needed cortisone injections and to wear a second pair of shinpads to protect his achilles tendons. But nearly 30 years after he left the city, his glittering legacy endures there - as it does elsewhere. As Naples Mayor Luigi de Magistris eloquently put it on Wednesday: “Diego made our people dream, he redeemed Naples with his genius.”