The Golden Boy

Diego Maradona was born on 30 October, 1960, in Buenos Aires province and was raised by his parents, Diego and Dalma, in the poor shanty town of Villa Fiorito on the southern outskirts of the Argentinian capital. At the age of three he was given his first football by his cousin and became immediately obsessed with both his new toy and the game of football, so much so that when he was eight years old playing for Estrella Roja, a neighbourhood club, he was spotted by a talent scout working for Argentinos Juniors, a Buenos Aires-based club in the first division. He would soon become the star of the club’s junior team, Los Cebollitas (‘The Little Onions’), leading them to 140 straight wins in succession.

By the time he was twelve years old his tricks with the ball were deemed sufficiently good enough to provide half-time entertainment during the Argentinos Juniors first division matches. In October, 1976, he made his professional debut for the club against Talleres de Córdoba, ten days before his 16th birthday. At the time this made him the youngest player ever to feature in the Argentine Primera Division.

His debut performance is talked about to this day, notably for a nutmeg he produced on the Cordoba player, Juan Domingo Cabrera, that has gone down in local folklore. Afterwards, Maradona famously recalled: “That day I felt I had held the sky in my hands.”

The following month he would score his first ever professional goal against San Lorenzo, a team from Mar del Plata. It was just a fortnight after his 16th birthday and the first goal of 116 in 161 games for Argentinos Juniors between 1976 and 1981.

Little wonder he quickly obtained the nickname ‘El Pibe de Oro’. The Golden Boy.

Maradona would never forget his poverty-stricken background from one of the bigger slums of the city. His father was a Guarani, a member of one of the indigenous tribes in Argentina, whilst his mother had Italian descent. It was a poor but close-knit Catholic family, with Maradona being the fifth of eight children, and the first son of three. His father, Diego, was both a bricklayer and a factory worker, a man who worked tirelessly but still struggled to provide for this large family and stay-at-home wife. His hours were endless in the factory but he knew that his son possessed a special talent and was desperate to ensure he received the support he needed to break through.

When he was first presented with a football he was so scared that it would be stolen that, so the story goes, the small boy Maradona would sleep with the ball under his shirt. Is it any wonder that he had such a natural affinity with the ball, as if it was an extension of his own body. Both his parents would go on to never miss a single game of football throughout their son’s time playing in the game. His mother, Dalma, would go without food on many occasions to ensure her children were well fed, especially Diego because she recognised the potential of her first son.

It is for all these reasons that Maradona junior not only became the family’s main breadwinner from the moment he signed a professional contract with Argentinos Juniors, but that his first motivation in life was to ensure that his parents were paid back for everything they did for him and would enjoy a far more comfortable life than they had been used to in Villa Fiorito.

He had managed to achieve this simply by playing in the Argentinian first division but when the mighty Boca Juniors came calling Maradona’s career suddenly shot into a totally different stratosphere.

TheGoldenBoy

The
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