Photo: Francisco Gonzalez / AFP / Getty Images
Is there a foolproof formula for kicking penalties? The question from Fidel Castro deserved an answer with a tone of confession from Diego Maradona .
– Before kicking, I look at the goalkeeper.
This canchero gesture -explained Ten- helps to intuit the side to which the goalkeeper will move. Then, the ball is thrown to the opposite.
– What if he stands still?
– I hit hard at the club of my choice.
The leader of the Cuban Revolution took out of nowhere a notebook and a pen. As a diligent student, he wrote down the formula and then solemnly announced:
– I’ll try it tomorrow.
That was dawn 29 July of 1987 in Havana and with the first rays of the sun ended an unusual audience, of little more of five hours, which had marked the beginning of the friendship between two universal figures.
A friendship that only death could dissolve twenty-nine years, three months and 24 days later.
The man who in 1986 masterfully led the Argentine team to the conquest of the World Cup played in Mexico also began to write with the boots the best chapters in the history of Napoli.
The 10 May 1987 directed the feat that ended with him to obtain the scudetto, and a month later, the 24 June, he lifted the Italian Cup.
Maradona and Fidel: legendary history
Maradona then had football at his feet , but in his head there was another challenge. And it was far from the four lines.
I wanted to meet another ten, the brain that on January 1, 1959 overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and would be president of Cuba for years.
The audience in one of the rooms of the Palace of the Revolution did not respect any protocol. It was an endearing friendship at first sight from the moment that Commander Fidel, 1, 91 meters tall, wrapped his huge arms around the Argentine captain, barely 1, 65.
And then they talked non-stop about the divine and the human. Some later revealed that the host dazzled them with his most precious cooking recipes and knowledge of world gastronomy.
“He looked like a chef,” he said. someone praising the precision with which he dictated the portions of the ingredients, their cuts and cooking times. Without being able to corroborate, the version remained according to which some sheets were detached from the notebook of the leftist leader to allow Doña Tota, the footballer’s mother, and Claudia, his wife, to take note of the State’s culinary secrets.
Understandable, then at that time, everyone present was intoxicated with admiration. Shortly before saying goodbye, Maradona received one of the most precious trophies of his life: the emblematic olive green cap of his new best friend .
Maradona’s stay in Cuba
The encounters were repeated in the following 39 years and the relationship was strengthened from 2000 when ‘ the Fluff ‘settled on the island in search of the cure for his drug addiction . He was 40 years old and the memory of the 25 October 1997, the date he decided to hang up his boots in Boca Juniors.
He had started his coaching career with more lows than highs and one of the things that made him most proud was to say that Castro called him in the mornings to encourage him in his rehabilitation and to talk a little about politics and sports.
Both cases were present at private and public meetings to which the press had access for a little more than 29 years. The Argentine carried the Cuban leader not only in his heart. One day he decided to have his face tattooed on the calf of his left leg.
The connection was like an Open Sesame that made Diego intimate with rulers related to Castroism and to Fidel in the midst of the mediatic sports passions.
Diego is a great friend and a very noble one as well. There is no doubt that he is a wonderful athlete and maintains a friendship with Cuba without any material gain for him.
But 25 November 2016, 10. 712 days after the first magical encounter in the Palace of the Revolution, Fidel Castro left this world. I was 90 years old.
– I have cried uncontrollably . I’m going to Cuba to say goodbye to my friend .
At 56 years Maradona was of the cheerful, restless and elusive soccer player that Fidel managed to catch with an affectionate hug that Caribbean summer night of 1987.
The gratitude of the Argentine that he always expressed in each meeting, did not fail to dismiss the person he considered his second father.
Fidel advised me, he opened the doors of Cuba when in Argentina there were clinics that closed them to me because they did not want Maradona’s death. And Fidel opened them to me from the heart.
Is there an infallible formula to be a myth beyond life?
The Diego of the Argentines took to prove it exactly four years after the departure of Fidel, the 25 November 2020. That was today 365 days ago.
By Hernán Bahos Ruiz.