No one like Diego

Once upon a time, it was the goalkeeper who was alone; today, it is the number 10 who remains on his own. In the World Cup final, Lionel Messi will face Yamal, a number 10 playing on the right. Messi is the last great example of a role that has always been complicated. Even though Messi is not just a number 10, he is a whole team, he is an entire nation; he is football made flesh. Argentina plays for him, moving like a shadow behind the greatest of all time alongside Pelé (I say this having read about him, not having ever seen him play), but behind Diego Armando Maradona, about whom I wish to say just one very simple thing. Today’s best footballers are untouchable.

In America, the referees protected Messi in a way I’d never seen before. Maradona endured real torture on the pitch (and sadly off it too, as his miserable end shows). If you have time, do have a look back at Argentina’s famous match against England – the one with the ‘Hand of God’. The entire English defence had a single aim: to tackle Maradona’s legs. From ‘Butcher’ to Gary Stevens, Fenwick and Sansom. In midfield, Patrick Reid – now a manager and also an actor – would, as soon as he was beaten, try to chase him down to tackle him at the ankles. Throughout those 90 minutes, Maradona kept darting about like a grasshopper to avoid being caught, without ever protesting.

The accounts of that match focus, quite mistakenly, primarily on the Argentine’s two feats, both of which were illusory: the ‘Hand of God’ and the slalom run through the defenders before scoring the second goal. They do not say enough about the knocks Maradona took from the first minute to the last. England didn’t play; they didn’t bother to. Bobby Robson, the manager, fielded a team without any strikers, lining up with only Hoddle, an attacking midfielder, at the heart of the attack. As the ball rolled towards the Argentine number 10, a squadron of thugs organised themselves, only beginning to doubt what they were doing at the start of the second half, when Maradona decided to dribble past them all – including goalkeeper Shilton – thereby redeeming both his own personal history and that of his people.

Looking back at that match so many years on – forty, to be precise – I found myself wondering who could have stopped someone like Maradona today. No one; Maradona could not be stopped except through physical aggression. For this reason, I believe he is unrivalled – the greatest of all time. The uniqueness of the number 10 coincides with his 1986 performance, even before any of Lionel Messi’s other matches, including the American final he heroically won at the age of forty. All credit to Messi, but no one will ever be as great as Diego.