December 29, 2020

Napoli's Golden Boy

Making nearly 200 appearances in a golden era for Serie A side Napoli, Diego Maradona was affectionately named "El Pibe del Oro" or "The Golden Boy" and it's not hard to see why. With 81 goals for the Italian giants, garnering two titles and a Coppa Italia, Maradona shone with Partenopei, becoming one of the greatest players in the club's history. It was in Naples that Maradona’s status as a footballing deity, at least as far as the inhabitants of this gritty southern Italian city were concerned, was confirmed.

Nowhere was Maradona's hypnotic talent and personality more adored than in Naples helping the unfancied club to usurp Milan and Juventus. It really was a match made in heaven, the diminutive street urchin from the wrong side of the tracks in partnership with a dramatic, chaotic city in southern Italy that felt undervalued and looked down upon from the great cultural cities further north, of Rome, Turin and Milan.

"Napoli non e Italia" (Napoli is not Italy), Maradona used to say. He felt right at home in a city where wealth, poverty, violence and football all co-existed on a daily basis.

He might have partied hard and with the wrong people, but the good memories are stronger and here Diego Armando Maradona will forever take his seat next to God under the "cielo azzurro" of Napoli.


It took Napoli mayor only 24 hours after Maradona's death to rename the San Paolo's football stadium in his honour: Diego Armando Maradona stadium.


Forza Napoli SEMPRE!


Curva B, in infamous fan club area of the stadium turned into an improvised Christmas shrine.


This mural dating from 1990 by Argentine artist Francisco Bosoletti has turned into a shrine since his death on Nov 25th, 2020.


The adoration is plastered across the city.... literally!


Little does it matter that Maradona played for Napoli over 30 years ago... he is still omnipresent...


... in every nook and cranny of this city...


... where even Japanese Napoli fans welcome!


This mural by street artist tvboy lasted only a few days back in 2018.


Souvenirs, souvenirs!!!

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