Diego Maradona turned 60 today. His life is a succession of wonderful anecdotes and bizarre moments. These are the five most beautiful stories of ‘Fluffy’ in the Netherlands.
Ignored by Dutch clubs
It could just have been that Maradona had started his professional career in the Netherlands. In 2000 journalist Simon Kuper stumbles upon an astonishing story about the Jewish Meijer City for Hard Gras magazine. He interviews him about the Jewish influence at Ajax, but he also tells Kuper about a meeting with an Argentinian wine merchant who offers him a youth player in the early seventies. Whether City can place him with a Dutch club. He tries at Ajax, Feyenoord, FC Den Haag and Sparta, but without success. Diego Maradona? Never heard of it.’
Maradona mania in Mierlo
About three years ago, the excitement in football-loving Netherlands is great. The great Maradona comes with his club FC Fujairah from the United Arab Emirates to Mierlo in Brabant for a training camp. The interest from fans and media is enormous. For FOX Sports, reporter Hélène Hendriks is traveling to the small village near Eindhoven. And as is often the case with a world star, she has to wait a long time.
“At one point I was done with it, but after seven hours he finally came. I was also mesmerized by watching the behavior of him and his entourage. I love to observe such a person. , the unrest, those people had absolutely no idea how crazy they actually behaved, while I just thought: don’t be so strange, you are just here in Mierlo, “says Hendriks.
Around the interview, Maradona Hendriks asks several times to come to his hotel room. “He did that without any embarrassment. And his girlfriend was just there. As said, that man lives completely in his own world.”
Striking spectator at PSV – AZ
During that same visit to the Netherlands, Maradona can not resist to watch a game in the Eredivisie. He takes the entire selection of his FC Fujairah with him. With the top match between PSV and AZ, Maradona – as we are used to from him – is passionate about it. He also receives a nice souvenir from the hands of none other than Ruud Gullit to take home: a PSV shirt with ‘Maradona’ on the back.
‘Live is life experience’ in the Arena
Maradona is about to become Vice President of Boca Juniors in 2005. When Boca plays at the Amsterdam Tournament, ‘Fluff’ will therefore come along. The organization of the tournament would like to give him a role after hearing this message. “It would be nice if, for example, we could auction a shirt signed by him, or let him perform the kick-off of the match between Ajax and Boca. Any cooperation would be fantastic. We would prefer to see him play along.”
At the very end of the tournament, the organization receives a beautiful farewell gift from Maradona. The Argentinian decides when the public has already gone home to take a ball onto the field. Keeping up the ball strongly reminds the Dutch romantics of Maradona’s famous warm-up on the song Live is Life by the Austrian band Opus.
Water fight at Papendal
Maradona comes to Papendal with his new club FC Barcelona in 1982 for a training camp. At that time FC Groningen chairman Renze de Vries sees an excellent opportunity to lure Maradona to the Oosterpark for a friendly match. However, former Barca trainer Udo Lattek from Germany does not wish to cooperate. “In Holland is Fußball Krieg”, he said.
The same Lattek also stopped a water fight between Dutch volleyball players and Diego Maradona in the Papendal corridors. Irene Pelser was one of those volleyball players at the time and tells Santos magazine about the short week in which the volleyball players and players of Barcelona played together. “But nothing happened, no fiddling, no messing around. There was mutual interest, we went to see each other’s training sessions. The last evening together it resulted in a water fight in the hallway. Great fun, we attacked each other with fire hoses. Diego also took part, he got the full brunt. ” (FOX Sports)
