Castrodale: Enjoy Maradona while you can, World Cup faithful

The fear of seeing Diego Maradona naked has forced Jelisa Castrodale to extreme measures. I think we all can relate.
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By Jelisa Castrodale
We’re eight days away from the opening ceremonies of the World Cup, which begins next Friday when tournament host South Africa takes the pitch against Mexico. Their opening coin toss kicks off a solid month of soccer that won’t end until one country’s profusely sweating captain is holding a thirteen-pound gold trophy over his head. I’m less familiar with soccer than I am with cold fusion or full-time employment, but I’m still reasonably sure that America isn’t winning.
Since Team USA will be leaving Johannesburg with the international equivalent of “Participant” ribbons, I’ve been looking for another team to follow for ninety-minute increments. After hearing coach Diego Maradona announce that he would run naked through the streets of Buenos Aires if his team takes the championship, I immediately scratched Argentina off the list. Although his playing career made him legendary, he’s spent the past two decades looking like the “Before” pictures in those P90x commercials. Fortunately for Argentina’s collective retinas and gag reflexes, Maradona’s schizophrenic strategies and two-line coaching resume don’t exactly guarantee a World Cup win.

Although this is Maradona’s first World Cup on the sidelines, he captained Argentina’s national team sixteen times and led them to the title in 1986, an infamous appearance that included one of the sport’s most controversial plays. In the quarterfinals against England, Maradona clearly punched the ball into the net, giving Argentina a 1-0 lead. It was a move that works in, say, beach volleyball but is frowned upon in soccer, where your hands are supposed to be more worthless than Kevin Federline. After the game, Maradona said that the goal was scored “A little with the head of Maradona and a lot with the hand of God.”
Shortly after the Hand of God, Maradona discovered the Nose of Tony Montana, snorting enough cocaine to make even Charlie Sheen’s sinus cavities collapse. He was suspended from soccer in 1991 for testing positive for coke and was kicked out of the 1994 World Cup for ephedrine use. He retired from competition in 1997, kicking off a decade of bad behavior that included extra-strength addictions to both booze and food, enduring several stints in rehab, a near-fatal overdose, and a stomach stapling surgery after the 5’4″ striker started to look like the Hand of God was force-feeding him KFC Double Downs.
Surprisingly, none of his off-pitch assclownery was enough to cancel out his years of heroism on the field. In South America, soccer is more popular than adult-onset diabetes in the American South and Maradona has been deified — literally, through the decade old Church of Maradona — for his contributions to Argentina’s team. Given the country’s loyalty to the former captain, his 2008 selection as the coach of the National team shouldn’t have come as a surprise … unless you’d seen his coaching record. Before his national appointment, Maradona spent one season leading Deportiva Textil Mandiyu (roughly translated as “The Cotton Fabric Team”) a minor minor-league club that plays in Argentina’s Zone D, which sounds less like a division and more like the Southwest boarding assignment that leaves you on the wing wedged between a pair of gremlins. The next year, he cursed on the sidelines of Racing Club — one of the “Big 5″ franchises — scraping together a dismal 3-20 record.
Unsurprisingly, nothing has changed but the logo on his embroidered Adidas jacket. Under Maradona’s watch, Bolivia gave Argentina a Hall-of-Fame caliber ass kicking and his squad didn’t qualify for the World Cup until a last-minute win over Uruguay. Addressing the media after the game, Maradona told his critics to “suck it and keep on sucking it,” which is a sentence that is only appropriate at a cough drop manufacturing convention.
Maradona has always had a difficult relationship with the media, possibly stemming from that time that he fired an air-rifle at a group of reporters. Just two weeks ago, he drove over the leg of one unfortunate beat writer, slowing down just long enough to call the guy an a****** before calmly pulling away to hand over his final 23-man roster to tournament officials. That’s been the problem with Maradona ever since he unlaced his cleats for the last time. His frequent profane rants and Lohan-levels of crazy have started to overshadow his contributions to the game. The past seven days have seen him threatening to streak through Buenos Aires before demanding a number of upgrades to his team’s hotel suites in South Africa. London’s Daily Mail reported that Maradona threw an epic tantrum until he was promised a pair of heated toilet seats, six Playstations and three desserts at every meal, a list that’s only an Abercrombie Kids gift card away from being Justin Beiber’s tour rider.
Next week, Argentina enters the tournament as a dark horse contender. Their squad is solid, led by forward Lionel Messi — the reigning FIFA World Player of the Year — who is coming off a tremendous season for F.C. Barcelona. Messi and the other Albicelestes begin the tournament in Group B, along with Greece, Nigeria and South Korea. Maradona has already proven that nothing — not nose candy or near-fatal overdoses or journalistic hit-and-runs — can diminish his popularity among the Argentinean people. Any success in South Africa just adds another line to his already overstuffed biography, but his failure to deliver a championship won’t — or can’t — damage his reputation.
I just hope he keeps his pants on.
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Jelisa Castrodale is a writer and comedian who has learned a lot about life by making a mess of her own. She chronicles her failures at The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy, covers music for London’s BitchBuzz and twitters while she waits at stoplights. Castrodale was featured in the book Twitter Wit and was named one of Mashable’s 10 Funniest Twitterers.
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