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The World's Game
JUNE 2006
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The World's Game
This month 32 nations will compete for the World Cup of soccer, the "beautiful game" that unites and divides countries around the globe. To celebrate that we bring you excerpts from The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup.
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By Sean Wilsey
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Photographs by Marco Anelli, Grazia Neri
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"Introduction" by Sean Wilsey
"IVORY COAST—The Way to Win Juju on the Field," by Paul Laity
"ENGLAND—Faded Glory: Taming the Hooligans," by Nick Hornby
"BRAZIL—Ballet with Ball: A Love Story," by John Lanchester
"COSTA RICA—Soccer Inc: Marketing Fanaticism," by Matthew Yeomans
"SPAIN—Morality Play: Soccer as Theater," by Robert Coover
"ANGOLA—A Greater Goal: Healing a War-Torn Land," by Henning Mankell
"ARGENTINA—Ode to Maradona: Falklands' Revenge," by Thomas Jones
"CROATIA—Group Therapy: A Nation is Born," by Courtney Angela Brkic
ARGENTINA
Ode to Maradona: Falklands' Revenge
By Thomas Jones
The highest compliment anyone could pay anyone else when I was growing up in England in the 1980s was "skill" (as in "man, your new skateboard is so skill"), and nobody was more skill than Diego Armando Maradona. His name was invoked as the highest form of praise, on the soccer field and elsewhere ("man, your new skateboard is so Maradona"). It took me a while to realize that the word referred to a human being, let alone a soccer player. Then I saw him score against Italy in the 1986 World Cup, leaping several feet into the air outside the left edge of the six-yard box to tap the ball deftly over the outstretched right leg of the Italian captain, past the outstretched arms of the keeper, and into the bottom right-hand corner of the goal. It was evident, even to me, that Maradona was not merely skillful, but skill embodied.
The next time Maradona scored was June 22, the day Argentina played against England. The two nations had last clashed four years earlier, not on a soccer field but in the Falklands War, which Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges later compared to "a fight between two bald men over a comb." By the time Britain had retaken the islands from Argentina, more than 900 men (most of them Argentines) had lost their lives. The victory saw Margaret Thatcher's popularity soar in Britain; the defeat contributed to the downfall of the right-wing military junta that had ruled Argentina since 1976.
All that was ancient history four years later—or so both teams insisted before the game. Maradona scored both of Argentina's goals in a 2-1 victory over England. The second of them, 11 dazzling seconds of superhuman skill, was voted Goal of the Century in 2002. When Maradona executed an exquisite arabesque, stretching his right leg elegantly behind him, I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd taken off into the air and started flying. He appeared to be moving through a different time frame from the England players, who came to tackle him only once he was already past them.
To my surprise, nobody I knew wanted to talk about that second, extraordinary goal. All anyone wanted to talk about was the one he'd scored four minutes earlier, with his fist. Maradona's one-time fans were seething with fury, as if he'd betrayed them personally. Overnight his name had become an insult, a by-word for cheating. I was baffled. What became known as the Hand of God incident just didn't seem so bad to me; it still doesn't. For one thing, I find it impressive that Maradona, five feet five inches (164 centimeters) tall, should have beaten the goalie, who was nearly a foot taller, to the ball. And weren't the referee and linesman most at fault, for not spotting the foul and for allowing the goal? I've always suspected that high-minded censure of the Hand of God is a way of dressing up disappointment and frustration that England lost; that the behavior for which England fans will never be able to forgive Maradona is not his cheating, but his running around five England players like so many wooden posts to score the greatest goal that's ever been scored and knock England out of the World Cup.
(Thomas Jones is an editor and writer at the London Review of Books.)
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