The King of Naples

On the face of it Napoli was a strange choice for the world’s biggest football star to move to. Italian football was dominated, just like its politics and economy, by the northern powerhouses of Juventus in Turin, the two Milan teams and Roma in the capital. In their whole history Napoli had won just two domestic trophies and never the Italian league, the ‘Scudetto’.

Moreover, the much-maligned city of Naples was in an economic depression, much to the delight of all visiting football fans who taunted the locals with the unfair, imbalanced north-south divide in the country.

All this, of course, lured the little Argentinian who recognised similarities with his own upbringing in the slums of Buenos Aires. The working-class hero was about to weave his magic like never before.

Once more he broke the world transfer fee record when he moved to the ankle of Italy for £6.9 million ($10.48 million). Over 75,000 fans poured into the Stadio San Paolo just to see their new hero revealed as Napoli’s new signing. He had achieved almost Messiah status without touching the ball.

It took no time before he was appointed club captain and in his third season as the team progressively improved, having returned from Mexico with a World Cup under his belt, he drove Napoli to a first-ever Serie A league title. The reaction to this in the city was unprecedented. It was as if the Neapolitans had suddenly forgotten all their woes. Murals of Maradona began to appear on walls all over the city and newborn babies were commonly being named Diego.

For the next two seasons Napoli would finish runners-up in Serie A before winning it for a second time in 1990. In between the two titles they also won the Coppa Italia (the domestic cup competition) in 1987 and, in 1989, the UEFA Cup, defeating Stuttgart in the two-legged final. In that final he scored a penalty and produced an assist in the 2-1 home win, and then a further assist in the away draw to secure their first and only European trophy to date. Napoli would also win the Italian Super Cup in 1990.

And so, in the space of five frenzied seasons, Maradona would play the lead role in Napoli winning two league titles, a UEFA Cup, a Coppa Italia and an Italian Super Cup, as well as two runners-up spots in La Liga.

Maradona was never a centre forward, of course. He was an attacking midfielder and yet, despite this, he still finished as Serie A’s top scorer in the 1987-88 season with 15 goals.
When he left Napoli he was the club’s all-time top scorer with 115 goals, a record that lasted until 2017.

His almost God-like status meant that the city turned a blind eye to his increasing off-field antics involving cocaine, an illegitimate son and alleged friendships with members of the Camorra, the local mafia-style organisation. The little Diego from the Buenos Aires shanty town had become Maradona, an alter ego who no longer had any privacy or downtime.

His mass adulation was to change after the 1990 World Cup was staged in Italy, when Maradona scored the decisive penalty in the semi-final against the host nation played in Naples. The maestro expected the home fans to support him and Argentina, partly because of what he had done for Napoli but also because of the way the Neapolitans had been treated by the rest of Italy. They did not and when Maradona’s strike beat Italy that spelled the end of the mutual love affair.

Suddenly everyone was against him. He received a suspended sentence for drug possession and then a 15 month ban for failing a drug test for cocaine which put an end to his time in Naples.

It was a tragedy that the man who did so much for one club and one city should end his time in such a manner, but how he transformed Napoli from losers to winners remains one of the most remarkable stories in the history of Italian and indeed European football.

The Kingof Naples

The King
of Naples