November 14, 2001

BUENOS AIRES JOURNAL

Home From Cuba, Soccer Star Kicks Some Shins

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

UENOS AIRES, Nov. 13 — The news in Buenos Aires could hardly be worse, with the nation's finances nearing collapse and unemployment soaring. But Argentines are transfixed by something more beguiling and only somewhat less painful: the bittersweet return of Diego Armando Maradona.

The greatest star in the history of Argentine soccer, known to everyone here as just Maradona, flew home last week after two years in Cuba, where he was treated for cocaine abuse. He came to appear in an exhibition match in his honor last Saturday.

He was wearing his old No. 10 at La Bombonera, the great stadium of his home team, the Boca Juniors. Once again he was playing with the national team, against a makeshift team of international all-stars.

Never mind that Maradona appeared overweight and sluggish and that the opposing goalie appeared to forget how to move his arms and feet when the 41-year-old legend aimed his once mighty leg at the ball.

He scored two goals on penalty kicks, the Argentine team won 6-3, and the crowd went wild.

"Let him pass — give him the ball!" cried the fans in a combination of good-hearted joking and nostalgia for a man who in recent years has spent more time in hospitals with heart and knee problems and in clinics for drug abuse than on soccer fields.

Maradona may only be a shadow of his old self, but he still has the strongest hold over his people of any living Argentine. Social critics often put him in the same league as Carlos Gardel, the Depression-era tango singer who died at the peak of his career in a plane crash, and Eva Perón as the country's most important cultural icons of the last century. All are symbols of meteoric success, other- worldly charisma and tragic fate.

As with Eva Perón, Maradona had a rags-to-riches story. As with her, too, his name is frequently preceded by the word "saint."

"As so many times in the past, his magic has appeared to change the course of history, even under the worst circumstances," waxed the sportswriter Daniel Arcucci in the newspaper La Nación on Sunday.

Has Maradona changed history? His public support helped change the course of Carlos Saúl Menem's flagging presidential campaign in 1995. Mr. Menem won in a landslide.

As soon as Maradona returned to Argentina, Mr. Menem — now out of office and under house arrest on charges of gun-running — invited him over for a barbecue. The two appeared on the front pages of newspapers arm-in-arm the next day.

Maradona probably cannot get Mr. Menem freed, or change the economic course of the country. But thousands turned to him to feel better last weekend.

Even in such hard times, 50,000 people paid $25 to $275 a ticket to see Maradona walk, skip and only occasionally run at Saturday's match. Across Buenos Aires, kiosks had one of the best weeks since the recession began 41 months ago, selling Maradona shirts, special newspaper supplements and copies of Maradona's best-selling autobiography.

The match organizers have estimated in the local press that total profits from tickets and paraphernalia surrounding the event will amount to $3 million. But that may well be very low given the cascade of Maradona dolls, books, videos, towels and bedsheets that have flooded the market.

At times the event seemed like a religious pilgrimage. When Maradona threw his shirt into the stands, a mob of fans piled on it and nearly tore it apart. Men took their children in their arms and cried as Maradona ran a hero's lap with his two daughters.

The crowd sang along with the Argentine rock group the Paranoid Rats when they played the old standby "We want to see Diego forever."

This has been a good spring for Argentine sportswriters, with the Argentine Davis Cup tennis team a world force for the first time in a generation and the World Cup soccer team gaining steam. But the return of Maradona has given the sportswriters barrels of ink.

Maradona arrived at a news conference two hours late the other day in a foul mood. He sat with his arms folded tightly around his chest while refusing to answer any tough questions about his obviously poor physical condition and lackluster training for the match. No matter. The press treated him gently.

Gente, an Argentine glamour magazine, ran a picture spread of Maradona in Cuba in which he was shown hugging Fidel Castro and showing the Cuban leader the Castro likeness tattooed on his leg.

Another magazine showed Maradona at his recent birthday party wearing an Osama bin Laden mask, one of several signs that he may be growing more anti-American.

At his news conference, he angrily charged that Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, who has so far failed to fix the economic crisis, was put in office by the United States. Asked how international soccer authorities might cure fan violence, he sneered about American bombing in Afghanistan.

"Menem is a prisoner, and someone like Cavallo is still walking the streets," Maradona snarled. "Let's get serious."

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