Morning to you all; this is a copy paste from facebook. Author Bonaventure Soh Ndikung. Thought its an interesting read. Cheers!
Si yo fuera Maradona
(Diego Armando Maradona Franco 1960-2020)
Much has been and will be written and said about Maradona... and a lot will be said about the hand of god, his dribbling skills, his drug escapades, his associations with the mafia, cocaine and alcohol, his obesity his rise and fall etc. Indisputably, he was the greatest of his generation. Fact. But as we get lost in narratives of greatness, we tend not to see the forest for the trees.
The Beatification of Maradona is eminent as we recall the man who rose from grass to grace not only as a football legend, but also as a man who stood for the revolution – proudly carrying a tattoo of Che on his arm – and with access to Castro like few people did. We recall that Maradona was part of the Argentinian squad in 1982 that flagged the banner “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” [The Falklands are Argentine] and four years later in Mexico after “the hand of god match” is said to have responded stated that it felt like "robbing an Englishman's wallet" and that that hand goal was his personal revenge for the 10-week ‘Guerra de las Malvinas’. One could argue that that was one of Maradona’s many decolonial moments. We also recall Maradona telling not one, but two or three popes to sell the gold ceilings of the Vatican to feed the poor around the world. Diego had no fear to speak truth to power – be it a pope or a head of state. Still or maybe because of this his beatification is eminent.
There is much that has, and will be written on Maradona in the next weeks and months and years, by many more versed than I am, but my contribution will be associative, tangential, personal (as if it could really be). When I read Achille Mbembe’s recently published interview with Malka Gouzer for the Swiss magazine Chilperic, one answer amongst many caught my attention. When asked about the time he spent playing and watching football and what the sport meant to him, he responded:
"It’s all about contingency and creation, creating in the midst of contingency. It’s about a certain relationship between a body in motion and a mind in a state of alert. That’s what fascinates me the most about football, the way in which 22 people attempt to inhabit a space they keep configuring and reconfiguring, erecting and erasing, and the explosions of primal joy when one’s team scores, or the primal screams when one’s team loses. And indeed, if I could go back in time, I would unquestionably pursue a professional soccer career. I’d retire in my early thirties and then do something else."
I must confess that reading about that creation and contingency, that relation between body in motion and mind and ball and maybe some higher beings, I had to think of Maradona.
But truly, this too is not my concern.
One of my most favourite sonic pieces of the great artist Manu Chao is “La Vida Tombola” in which he sings that Si yo fuera Maradona/ if he were Maradona, he’d live just like him, in front of any goal, he’d never make mistakes, he’d be lost in any place because life is a tombola, by night and by day..., lets move on and look forward.
“If i were Maradona/ i'd live just like him/...a thousand blasts... a thousand friends/ and whatever comes thousand times a hundred.../ if i were Maradona/ i'd come out on mondovision/ to yell at the FIFA that/ "They are the great thief!"”
“If i were Maradona/ i'd live just like him/ because this world is a ball/ that must be lived day to day/ If i were Maradona/ i'd face any piece of trash/ i'd never make mistakes...”
Though this was/is a beautiful anthem of canonization, we know with the benefit of hindsight that Maradona was everything but perfect. A legend with a lot of mistakes. A very human god. Not infallible at all. A man with many enemy-friends, with many weaknesses, a genius who knew of his vulnerability.
But to be honest, my concern is really the Maradona moment. Everyone has their Maradona moment. And I will like to share a few of mine.
Moment one: Si yo fuera Maradona, I would like to be remembered as the man that could sync with the psyche of nations.
It was 1990, and I was watching my third football world cup. Maradona was a name in the household like in the rest of the world at least since 1982 – to me subconsciously – and only after 1986 consciously. The opening watch was Argentina against Cameroon. The winner of the 1986 world cup in Mexico against some African country, as the commentators had put it. Rumour has it that when some Cameroonian players saw the legendary Maradona in the vestiaire, they started crying as they felt like they had just encountered a god. We know that Cameroonians, especially Cameroonian football players, with their pride and trust in themselves won’t do that, but another nice story of mythmaking. But then out on the pitch even before the match began, there was a match before the match. A David versus Goliath moment. The captain of the Cameroonian team – the 1,82m tall and healthy looking Steven Tataw, who also tragically passed in this year of tragedy 2020 – stood at the center point facing the 1,65m tall Maradona. The clapped hands, exchanged pleasantries and Maradona moved on to perform the match before the match. With the back of his wicked left foot, he thrust the ball to his right leg, thereby jolting the ball upwards, followed by two taps with the left foot, and four bumps and bounces with his left shoulder. Each time the ball was thrust in the air, it felt like an eternity before it landed again with an incredible precision on his left shoulder, all of these accompanied by rhythmic wails of the spectators. We sat spellbound in front of the TV in Bamenda. Spellbound and jaws-dropped to be more precise. A shower ran through the spine of a whole nation. If there was a way, Cameroonians would have begged for the match to be postponed. Maradona charmed and at the same time lamed a whole nation sitting in front of their TV screens. People seemed already psychically defeated before the match even started. And that was his intention. But as they say: “impossible n’est pas Camerounais.” The results of that game need not be repeated. But suffice it to say that Benjamin Massing, Steven Tataw and co kept the defence line standing, while Roger Milla and finally Omam Biyik could cause havoc.
Moment two: Si yo fuera Maradona, I would like to be remembered as the man who embraced his vulnerability.
This moment is a multiple one. It seemed to me as a young man that everytime he scored a goal and gave and interview he would cry. In German one would say he is “nah am Wasser gebaut!” In almost every interview he would seize the chance to talk about his mother and often his childhood and children. There was something that always fascinated me about this vulnerable god. I remember watching an interview of his on YouTube a few years ago in which he reflects on what he would have become if he hadn’t started doing cocaine. He speaks of all he had planned to do – build his mother a house, marry, make a family, bring honour to Argentina etc – and most especially he talked about his guilt. One could feel a great man standing on raw eggs. But that to my opinion is what made Maradona such a great man. That as much as he was up there as a legend of his discipline, he was as humble, as fragile, vulnerable, as a man-of-the-people as one could ever be. People around the world could identify with him. The saw in him all their dreams of sainthood, as much as they saw in him all their real weaknesses.
Moment three: Si yo fuera Maradona, I would like to be remembered as the Trickster I was. As the trickster who used his great degree of intellect, savviness, and other secret knowledges to subvert, to trick and defy normativity, conventionality and most especially defy gravity with the ball virtually glued to his feet. In thinking of Maradona, I have been thinking of Eshu/Elegba, the trickster Yoruba god. The protective and benevolent spirit, the one who is the messenger of the chief god Ifa, and carries messages, sacrifices, divinations between heaven and earth, between gods and humans. Eshu the restorator, but also the god of uncertainty, chance, and accident. Eshu the one who understands languages beyond languages, who loiters around tresholds and crossroads.
In thinking about Diego Maradona, I have been thinking of football as a language beyond languages, of football and especially the way he played it as a way of restoring the world, of Maradona as a messenger of the many who came from the spaces he came from, not geographically but otherwise. In thinking about Maradona one can’t help but think of the trickster who was tricked by the tombola of life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM9JWCVG4v4[/video]
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#manuchao
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