Prima Dona

San Siro stadium in Milan, home of the AC Milan soccer team, slowly fills with keyed-up fans clad in the red and black of their club as the long-awaited meeting between Milan and one of its biggest rivals, Napoli, nears. The cheering and foot-stomping of Milan's most rabid boosters in the second deck of the end zone are a reminder of the passion and, ultimately, the danger that certain spectators bring to soccer matches worldwide.

A small group of Napoli loyalists dressed in their team's colors (light blue and white) fills the far end of the upper deck, separated from the Milan boosters by the length of the field. The Milanese generally look down on Neapolitans as being lazy and corrupt. Neapolitans, for their part, feel their city glows with a passion, sensuality and openness that the relatively stiff, workaholic Milanese cannot hope to comprehend.

"Welcome to Italy from North Africa!" chant the Milan boosters, as Napoli takes the field. "Soap and water! Wash yourselves! Clean the steps before leaving!"

Maradona himself—short, dark, foreign and gifted—is the target for the most vehement jeers. "Swing from the trees and suck the banana!" chant the extremists. "Maradona, son of a bitch!"

The little man runs onto the pitch in his light-blue jersey, white shorts and light-blue socks, and stretches his heavily muscled legs. His sleeves hang clown past his wrists as if his shirt were a little boy's pajama top. Maradona is clearly shorter than anyone else on either team, though height is not that important a factor in soccer. His squatness puts him at a disadvantage for knocking down balls and for heading, but it plants him badgerlike on the turf and gives him a rock-solid base from which to launch his explosive left-footed shots. Any time he crosses the center line, he is close enough to score.

Maradona will do anything to put points on the board, even if it means using a part of his anatomy prohibited by the rules. In the quarterfinals of the '86 World Cup, he scored the first of his two goals in a 2-1 win over England by knocking in the ball with his fist, instead of his head. Picking up on Maradona's own humble description of the play, sportswriters dubbed it the "hand-of-God" goal. In March, after nearly four years of feigning innocence, he finally admitted on Italian television that "it was my hand and not God's" that had scored the goal.

As play begins in Milan, Maradona ignores the insults from the crowd and focuses entirely on the game. Indeed, when he confronts the ball, he seems somehow to expand, to grow out of his chunky, troubled, earthbound frame and become larger. It is the way Mike Tyson used to expand, pre-Buster Douglas, as he coiled to unload a block of cement onto the chin of a terrified foe.

Part of the public's love-hate fascination with Maradona stems from the fact that he is seen as an overstepper, that beneath his athletic, nouveau-riche exterior lies the soul of a simple hick who can be fleeced and chastened by sly folks everywhere. As recently as 1984, when he first signed with Napoli, he was broke. Even though he had already earned almost $3 million playing two years for Barcelona, bad financial advice from hangers-on had done him in. Now he probably has too much money ever to lose it all. But it's also likely that once Maradona finishes playing, he will not be sought after for many commercial endeavors. "He's not like Pelé, who because of his smile and warmth continues to be popular long after his retirement," says Daniel Arcucci, a Buenos Aires sports-writer who has covered Maradona for years.

In 1976 at age 15, Maradona signed his first professional contract, with the Argentinos Juniors (a first-division team in Buenos Aires) for about $400 a month, and his rise to fame after that was swift and sure. In 1977, he became the youngest player ever to join the national team, but when he did not make the cut for Argentina's World Cup squad the following year, he was wounded terribly. The World Cup finals were held in Argentina that year, and the home team won the championship before an adoring crowd. Maradona, the naturally gifted kid from the Villa Fiorito slum, had been denied his first real chance to be a big man. "Not playing in the World Cup in Argentina is the greatest frustration of my career," he said years later. The rejection placed a chip firmly on his shoulder, subliminal baggage that has never quite fallen off.

Leaving Argentina for Barcelona in 1982 was no big deal. Maradona is nothing if not the quintessential free agent. Though he loves his country and spends up to $15,000 a month on telephone calls to his mother, Dalma Franco, his father, Diego, and his four siblings still in Argentina (two others live in Europe), he has not lived in his native land full-time for nearly a decade. However, he does own several apartments and a floor of a building in downtown Buenos Aires, in addition to his $1 million villa, $500,000 apartment and two offices in Naples.