I never want to think about that match again.

It was the crime against nature, a day when I wanted to dig a hole in the ground and bury myself in it.

Welcome to It Was What It Was. I'm Rob Drape. I'm here of Jonathan Wilson and that was Coco Basile, the

Argentina manager, talking about a very famous and notorious five-nil defeat to Colombia at home at the

Monumental in September 1993. And it's significant for this episode because we're starting a two-parter

on the decline really of Diego Maradona as a footballer,

the 1990s really. We're not doing the rise bit, we're doing the fall, we're doing the latter

years of his professional career, which is marred in drug addiction, failed drug tests,

but all course, comebacks to the Argentina national team. And this game will will be crucial in persuading him to come back, to come and play for Argentina. The pressure just becomes overwhelming because the side is performing so badly. And I think we've decided Jonathan, haven't we, that Diego's life is just so rich and varied that we can't take it all on in one chunk. So we're going to

break it up. And there's going to be no linear orders to that. We're going to do it as and when we

choose. But this is the 1990s. And this is really, it's tragic, ultimately, I suppose, when you

think about how Maradonna dies eventually. And it's, ultimately, I suppose, when you think about how Maradonna dies eventually,

and also sad in terms of the addictive nature of the man, but is also incredibly fascinating.

Yeah, so I guess these two episodes that we're doing this week,

if you've seen the film, Massif Capadia's brilliant documentary about Maradonna, we sort of pick up where he finishes. So he finishes with Maradona, successful at Napoli. And we're sort of taking the story from a 1990 World Cup where Argentina have lost in the final. We're taking it from there up to Maradona's retirement on his 37th birthday.

But yeah, I think this game, there's a Argentine-Colombia game,

there's a few games like this which just have a significance for both sides,

for everybody involved, and in this case somebody who wasn't involved,

was it way beyond what one game should have.

So this game is profoundly important in actually quite negative ways, I think, for Colombian football.

I know we keep promising we'll deal a Colombian series, and we will.

We need to get that right, and we need to get the research and everything done.

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