Chapter 62 of 100
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Maradona had crashed and burned.
Anyone catching a glimpse of Diego Maradona would have been stunned to realize they were looking at a man who had once been one of the greatest soccer players in the history of the sport. Born into severe poverty, Maradona had risen from a Buenos Aires shantytown to become an Argentine national hero and international superstar, leading Argentina to a World Cup championship in 1986 and dominating the Italian professional league for much of the 1980s. Along the way, he had dazzled millions of fans with his ball-handling and goal-scoring abilities. The most famous of his goals — against Great Britain in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinals — was clearly the result of a handball. When reporters asked about the incident, Maradona described the goal as having been scored “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.” Now, almost two decades since the notorious “Hand of God” goal, Maradona was grotesquely unhealthy. A mere 5 feet 6 inches in height, his weight had ballooned to well over 300 pounds since his retirement in 1997. When he wasn’t eating and drinking enormous quantities of alcohol, Maradona was slowly killing himself with cocaine, a drug he’d begun using as a player and which had eventually led to his expulsion from the Italian professional league. (Drugs had also ended his World Cup career in 1994; when routing tests detected ephedrine in his blood, Maradona was sent home, and his team exited the tournament in the second round.) By the age of 45, Maradona had endured two heart attacks and kidney disease, and he seemed unlikely to make it to the age of 50. One of the most remarkable athletes of his era, Maradona had crashed and burned.
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