As an Argentinian knowing football is a highly valued skill but it is only thanks to Maradona when I was 7 years old that I learned that you can learn pretty much everything through football.
A typical Sunday afternoon in 90s Argentina
Buenos Aires, 1997: It was a Saturday afternoon at my grandparents’ house. We had just finished lunch — my grandmother Teresa’s classic milanesas with mashed potatoes — and I was in the living room watching a football show that revisited Napoli’s 1987 Scudetto title.
I was only seven years old, filled with a growing curiosity about this sport that all the adults around me seemed to love. I already enjoyed playing and watching it, and I was eager to learn and memorise everything related to the ball. This is something I’d only realize as an adult: in Argentina, knowing about football is a highly valued social skill.
At that age, the world was still a puzzle of maps and flags for me, a distant collage of continents and capitals that I memorised for school. I already knew which river was the longest and which ocean was the deepest, but there was something about my understanding of reality that remained superficial. That was until I heard Maradona.
Diego: my real teacher
As I said, it was a typical Sunday, with the television lighting up the room with interviews and matches from the glorious Calcio from the 80s. On the screen, Diego Armando Maradona spoke from his trench in Naples. I don’t remember the exact context of the interview, but I remember the words that shifted something inside me. He was talking about Italy, a country I imagined as a perfect boot and according to my first-grade teacher, the land where the Romans had once ruled. But Diego didn’t see one single country; he saw two.
“In the north, there are the rich; in the south, the poor,” he said, with that voice carrying equal parts grit and glory. “They look down on us as if we’re less, but on the pitch, we are equals.”
This wasn’t the Italy I had learned Diego revealed a hidden fracture, an invisible border that split the country into two realities: the affluent, industrialised north and the struggling, marginalised south. Naples, where Maradona played, was in the heart of that southern reality.
Diego wasn’t just talking about football; he was exposing the class struggle embedded in society. His words hit me like a bolt of lightning. It was as if he had drawn a new map for me, one that didn’t just show rivers, mountains, and cities but also carried the weight of inequality, of prejudice, of a fight for respect.
Maradona, the rebel among the power
Through Maradona’s voice, I began to see that Naples wasn’t just a city battling Juventus or Milan; it was a city battling stereotypes, history, and systemic neglect. The stadium wasn’t just a place for sport — it was an arena where a deeply rooted societal battle played out every weekend. The cheers, the jeers, the goals — they all meant something greater.
Maradona’s words resonated far beyond the field. He wasn’t just the captain of a team; he was the spokesperson for a people. When he led Napoli to victory against the northern giants, it wasn’t just a win for a football club — it was a win for the south, for the downtrodden, for everyone who had ever been told they were less.
That was a revelation. I had never considered that a country could be divided like that, that borders weren’t always drawn on maps. There was poverty and wealth, north and south, divisions I didn’t fully understand but that suddenly seemed crucial. Diego, with his blunt simplicity, was teaching me something that neither books nor teachers had managed to explain.
A life lesson
Of course over time, I returned to those words to interpret them from a different perspective as I grew up. First, I understood them within the context of football. Then, I started seeing those words everywhere: in my own country, in the streets I crossed every day, in the stories of people living realities vastly different from mine. Diego had spoken about Italy, but he was also speaking about the world.
And so, without even realising it, Maradona became my first teacher in understanding the inequalities of the world. He showed me that football was much more than a game, that every pass and every goal could be an act of defiance, a statement of principles. With his words, Diego planted a seed that grew alongside me, a lesson that extended far beyond the stadiums and into life itself.
Today, when I think of that afternoon, I understand it was more than a fleeting moment. It was the beginning of a way of seeing the world, a way of understanding that divisions are not always natural and that barriers can be broken, both on and off the pitch. And it all started with Diego, the man who, without intending to, gave me my first real geography lesson.
Thinking points
Educators can use this article to show how football can teach about life and important topics children study in school. Educators use this article to start a conversation about Italian History and Geography and compare it with their own or other countries:
- Is Italy particularly diverse in terms of socio-economical situations between North and South?
- Could we reflect on the historical reasons behind this division?
- Can you name another country that has a similar situation?
Find out more
You can read the article and the video about Maradona in Napoli on TYC Sports (Spanish), read more about it in the recent article on ESPN (Spanish), and also watch the ESP Documentary (Spanish and Italian with subtitles) about the relationship between Maradona and Napoli. Educators can also use our free resource which helps to connect football to economic disparities in Italy.
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