00:01Diego Armando Maradona, the defining footballer of the 1980s.
00:09The man who single-handedly won a World Cup,
00:12dominating football's greatest stage, like nobody else, before or since.
00:21Maradona's destiny was written at an early age.
00:24Raised in poverty in the slums of Buenos Aires,
00:26the prodigy was never without a ball at his feet.
00:30He was the quintessential street footballer.
00:34His father, Diego Sr., was convinced his boy was special,
00:38and he formed a junior football side, Estrella Rojo, to prove it.
00:44He was right.
00:46At 10, Maradona was scouted by Los Cebolitas,
00:49the youth team of Argentinos juniors.
00:51They won 136 games in a row.
00:55Maradona's reward was a professional debut,
00:57aged just 15 years and 355 days,
01:01the youngest ever in the Primera División.
01:05Barely four months later, he was breaking records for the national team,
01:10coming on in the 62nd minute against Hungary on February 27, 1977.
01:15But Argentina coach Cesar Menotti resisted calls to add the youngster to the victorious 1978 World Cup squad,
01:24with the teenager making only sporadic appearances until his first goal against Scotland in 1979.
01:33By the 1982 World Cup, the now 21-year-old was the talisman of La Albiceleste.
01:41It made him a marked man in an era when defenders were given free reign to commit grievous bodily harm.
01:49In Spain, everything went through him, and that included opposition defenders.
01:54Italy's Claudio Gentile was particularly brutal.
01:58It was no surprise when Maradona lost his temper and was sent off late in his side's final match against
02:04Brazil,
02:04compounding a disappointing second-round elimination.
02:12After the World Cup of 82, Maradona's opponents knew his weakness on the pitch was his temper.
02:22His weakness off the pitch, cocaine, had not yet been exposed.
02:27But together, his temper and his addiction conspired to wreck his time at Barcelona,
02:32where he had moved for a world-record transfer of £5 million.
02:40Two seasons of goals and trophies, but also of illness, injury,
02:43and a furious brawl in the 1984 Copa del Rey.
02:48When Maradona eventually asked to leave, Barca were happy to oblige,
02:52especially when Napoli stumped up another record transfer fee of £6.9 million.
03:01As Maradona would say on a joyous return many years later,
03:05Napoli was where he played his best football,
03:08where he was most loved,
03:11and from where he launched his 1986 World Cup campaign,
03:14the greatest single performance in World Cup history.
03:23Maradona was named captain of Argentina for the Mexico World Cup.
03:27He played all seven games and scored five goals,
03:30including two against England in the quarter-final.
03:33One is on a pedestal in football history.
03:37One lives on in infamy.
03:41Many of the England players that day have never forgiven Maradona
03:45for what they believed was cheating when he punched the opening goal into the net.
03:49An unrepentant Maradona later admitted the goal was
03:53a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.
03:58Their complaints extended to still being in shock
04:01when, minutes later, they were on the wrong end of the World Cup goal of the century.
04:07In a mazy dribble from inside his own half,
04:11Maradona waltzed the ball past Peter Beardsley,
04:14Steve Hodge and Peter Reid.
04:19He embarrassed Terry Butcher and Terry Fenwick
04:21before ending his 60-meter slalom
04:24by slotting the ball beyond Peter Shilton.
04:31It was Maradona's crowning glory,
04:33the high point of a career packed full of individual brilliance.
04:38It was almost as if the cup was fated to him there and then.
04:43Throughout Mexico 86,
04:46Maradona created more than half of Argentina's shots,
04:48embarked on 90 dribbles and was fouled 53 times.
04:53He had a part in 10 of Argentina's 14 goals,
04:57including the assist for the winning strike in the final
04:59and claimed the golden ball by a unanimous vote.
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