The Fall of Diego Maradona | Part Two
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to It Was What It Was, the football history podcast. This week, Jonathan and Rob look into the tragic and fascinating latter years of Diego Maradona's professional football career during the 1990s.
Jonathan and Rob explore Maradona's struggles with cocaine addiction, legal troubles, and numerous attempts to revive his career amidst a national crisis for Argentina's football team. From his return to his parents' hometown to his controversial time at the 1994 World Cup, follow Maradona's tumultuous journey as he battles to maintain his footballing legacy.
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00:00 Introduction to Argentina's Turbulent Football History
00:33 Diego Maradona's Struggles and Return
01:09 Argentina's National Team Crisis
01:56 Maradona's Controversial Comeback
05:01 Challenges with Argentine Football Culture
10:38 Maradona's Legal and Personal Battles
16:56 Road to the 1994 World Cup
24:41 Maradona's Defense and Consequences
26:16 Public Reaction and Media Coverage
27:30 Argentinian Utopianism and Football
31:12 Maradona's Struggles and Ban
36:38 Attempted Comeback and Managerial Stints
38:16 Final Matches and Retirement
48:22 Legacy and Future Stories
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ours is a country in which it's a speculators who win, a country that violated its own constitution every time it felt like it. |
| 0:15.3 | Argentina paid with Maradonna for a way of life, but not heeding a law. |
| 0:20.7 | Welcome to It Was What It Was with me, Rob Draper and with Jonathan Wilson. |
| 0:24.2 | That was Bernardo Neustadt, the prominent journalist, Argentine journalist, |
| 0:29.5 | speaking about the subject of today's episode. |
| 0:33.3 | We're in the second part of our series on Diego Maradona's latter years as a professional |
| 0:39.1 | footballer in the 1990s when he's in decline. |
| 0:42.1 | It's a tragic story. |
| 0:44.1 | It's also a very fascinating story. |
| 0:45.9 | And when we left it in the last part, Jonathan, with a cocaine addiction, Diego Maradona, |
| 0:52.0 | had taken himself back to a squina, the hometown of his parents, |
| 0:56.8 | to kind of clean himself up. |
| 0:58.5 | And it almost like that's a return to childhood, isn't it? |
| 1:01.3 | A return to the womb. |
| 1:02.3 | A return to try and get yourself better and healthier and clean again. |
| 1:09.7 | And this is all happening, just as the Argentine national team is about to |
| 1:14.2 | have a crisis losing 5-0 to Colombia, which is where we started the first episode. |
| 1:20.4 | Yeah, exactly. So these two threads have come together. |
| 1:24.7 | Yeah, I mean, Murdoin never lived in Eskina as a child, but as where his parents were from, but they've gone back there. |
| 1:30.7 | But I think it's very much just going somewhere away from the city, away from distractions, going back to a simpler way of life, to try and get himself clean. |
| 1:40.9 | To continue the messianic theme that we established in the first part, it's kind of going |
| 1:46.2 | into the wilderness, isn't it? |
... |
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