Maradona death |City of God |Profile

What remains of the fluff in your neighborhood?The house is still in a state of abandonment, the pasture where he played no longer exists, the streets are covered with asphalt and the train he took to Puente Alsina four years ago that does not work.There is no street with its name or a club baptized as a cosmic kite or eternal Diego.Nor a monument that dazzles or an altar to cry.However, everything is.Where?In its people.Maradona's traces can be followed in those who venerate it, in which they intend to charge for a photo at the door of their house, in which the Maradonian cause militated, in which they still claim that they did very little for them and inThose who insist on holding their memory.He put them on the world map, they keep him alive.Welcome to Fiorito, the city of God.

The merchants of the Lord.The kiosk piba attends behind a fence while a Milanese ends.With kindness I gives me the soda and while counting the bills of the return question:

"You're not here, right?"

"No, I'm a journalist, I came to make a note in the neighborhood.

It is not necessary to give more details.The kiosk's kid knows that there is only one reason why a journalist can appear in the neighborhood.And it is not necessary to mention it: on this side of the Maradona world it is implicit, it is a code, an omnipresent figure.

—Then I took care, because here they will want to ask you for money.

Here is the United Star Land Court, an emblematic club by Villa Fiorito.In the 70s it was called Red Star and that shirt used it nothing less than Diego when he had not yet debuted in the first of Argentines.Now the property is taken by some squatters who managed it without asking permission from the leaders.The dispute is fierce: the squatters control the court while the old managers resist the occupation at the headquarters, less than ten blocks.

Fiorito, that place in the world where Maradona is universal

United stars should be an obligatory stop of the Maradonian tour.The walls are illustrated with two giant murals.In one Diego Cembolita lives with Diego Champion in 86 and the legendDiego is eternal ".There are different versions of whether or not he played on this court, what is known is that he did when the club was still called Red Star and it was a pasture that was on another property, where there is now a housing settlement.

In a few hours they will tell me about those games that were played for money, for a lot.They assure that he made a red star an invincible team.But those stories will come later.Now I am a newcomer.I am looking for footprints of an illustrious dead, stories, signs that help me understand it, while I still listening carefully to the Kiosk Gang's advice.

—And the Goyo.

"The Goyo Carrizo, who took him to the onions?

-Of course.Live there, look, passing the corner, in that house with black gate.

I should have returned to the kiosk to tell the kid that the Goyo, another of Fiorito's famous characters, confessed that he does not want to take pictures, that he prefers to keep himself, he should have returned to tell the kid that his famous neighborHe is already tired of talking about fluff.

Villa Maradona.Fiorito is a modest neighborhood on the edge of the stream, with paved streets and brick walls without revoking.On the fronts of some houses there are cardboard posters that announce entrepreneurships: there is homemade bread, arrangements are made, clothes are sold.There are also paths with mountains of debris and flooded corners because the drains are covered by the garbage discarding recyclers.

This city, anyway, is more habitable than in the 60s, when Diego lived.For those years the houses were made of sheet and cardboard, the rain left ditch in the streets of land and there was only one tap per block.Now there are sewers and the neighborhood does not smell like stagnant water.It is curious, but there are neighbors who seem to miss that time of two or three houses per apple, when everything was a field and mount, when there was a lagoon where the fluff was going to hunt frogs.

Maradona himself told infinity of times the needs of his family when he lived in Fiorito."I grew up in a private neighborhood ... deprived of water, light, phone".With humor, with irony, sometimes nostalgia, Diego never denied his place.“We ate meat only when Dad charged, all 4.That day there were milanesas, sometimes to the Neapolitan.Those days were like Christmas ".And he said more: “When Mom had to wash the dishes or we had to bathe, he sent me to look for water to a tap.I wore the twenty -liter oil tachos and filled them.He put them in the kitchen and mom passed the water through the face and body, so that we were very clean. ”.

A neighbor who never left Fiorito awards Diego the phrase "one never leaves Fiorito".Go to know if he ever said it, but the version is plausible.What is true is that the Maradona who stayed and that its people hold is not the one that most know.Here is the fluff, a code that also works as a trap: if someone calls Diego or Maradona, he betrayed himself as a foreigner.But the most wonderful thing is that none of the stories that are told exceeds the borders of the neighborhood.Everything has to do with that girls who broke it and that one day until it came out in the Pipo Mancera program.What came later is foreign, corresponds to other geographies.

Gianinna Maradona's post -ramporador on the first anniversary of Diego's death

There are those who played, those who say they played, those who were going to see it to the pasture, those who shared a roast, those who told him and those who lived in front of a second aunt on the maternal side.The stories cross, they meet, compete, but they insist on denying the post-fiorito era.Here there is no mouth, Barcelona or Nápoli, there are no goals to the English or world of South Africa, there are no Coppola or Claudia.The Maradonian universe is the own.Here the Diego is immaculate, he speaks of Corrido and his only excess is with the ball.And here was not November 25, 2020.As anywhere else in the world, in Fiorito it is literal: Pelusa did not die.

Soccer, trick and cumbia.The United Star Headquarters is modest, like everything in Fiorito.A room with four tables, some chairs and a counter.A treasure hangs on a wall: the lint framed photo with the white shirt and the red star in the chest.Diego dressed in the colors of his first love.

It is the same shirt that they painted in the mural that inaugurated on October 30.Illustrates the head of the headquarters and Diego has the pose and the challenging look of 86 but with the red star jacket.That day there was also a celebration for the 61st birthday.The room was filled with neighbors to eat a roast, dance and sing the hand of God.

A few weeks after the celebration, five members of the club's board of directors receive me to evoke their Messiah.They join the tables, uncover a coca and start with a burst of those moments that are already part of their lives.

- I played until it was done at night and the Canchita had no light, but he continued, he continued, nothing was seen and he wanted to continue playing.

-An day, Cyterszpiler's rengo came to look for him in a Falcon.The fluff was already playing in the first of Argentines and found him here, in El Potrero.The Rengo was crazy!

- Another who walked here was Tyson.He came a few years ago to know the place where Maradona was born.Appeared with two monkeys, turned a few and left.

- Tyson with bodyguards?It's curious...

-Cá in Fiorito fits anyone.

The boys are released, they want to talk, to tell, to share it, what they know, what they told them.And they promise that they do not want to enlarge the myth, that they intend to tell "the truth".

- Look, to be honest, here there are people who do not want the fluff.

-It's that some look more at their private life.

- They complain that he did not return or that he did little for the people here.

- As if I had the obligation to do it!

- But an eye that did a lot, what happens is that they do not know or do not find out.

-Conta the entrances.

-Ah, yes, it was when he was a team technician and they had to play the game with Peru to qualify for the World Cup.Getting tickets was impossible then some boys here went to Ezeiza and asked the fluff if they could give them some tickets to the people here and the fluff gave them about fifteen, but the turros came and sold them.

-And he knew it, some time later we learned that he knew.

- How was that of the parties for bets?

"They were killed!"

-Two teams challenged hand in hand, were two games, one on each court.There was a lot.

-All they played the salary.

-Cá in Red Estrella also played Chitosso, it was 9.It was not a great team that, but when the fluff began to play it was unbeatable.He was 13, 14 years old and drove them crazy.

-The times I played down, it was 6.He said it was to have more court's panorama.

- What happens is that there were always good players here, they leave the tiles below.

-Chirola Yazalde…

-Fiorito is football, trick and cumbia.

-...THE TURCO GARCÍA ...

-Una vuelta me acuerdo le preguntaron al Pelusa cuando ya estaba en Europa cuál había sido el arquero más difícil que tuvo que enfrentar y nombró a Santín.

-¡Santín! Cuando se lo cruzaba al Pelusa le decía “che, matungo, vení, pateame unos penales, te hago una apuesta”.What character!

-Vive Santín, el otro día lo vi por la estación, en la mochila lleva una foto que se sacó con el Pelusa.

The avalanche of stories is taken a recess.Each one contributed his own, each one exposed to his Diego.José Salazar is the club's protest, he has a few more years than the fluff and they call him “the hero” because he is the closest in those years.Armando Mansilla is a vocal, looks Boca's shield in the shirt and also shared Maradonian moments.Daniel Alomo, another CD member, has a few years, a tattoo on the forearm with 10 in the selection and almost apologizes because the memories he brings are borrowed.

I ask you if you can accompany Azamor 523, the house where everything started.Is here just around.But they alert me: before you have to do a minimum intelligence work.And they explain to me: Doña Tota left Mari's house, a woman who had worked with her, but Mari left and stayed Cambá, her husband, with the son.And it turns out that the child intends to charge those who approach to take a picture.The boy is awarded by the phrase "Here everyone wins twine with Maradona less me".

-El otro día a un vecino de acá le quiso cobrar 5 lucas.

-A mí me contaron que cobra 7.

The truth is that you have to wait for the exact moment when the collector is not.The moment, announces Claudio Villarruel, the general secretary of the club, is now.There we are waiting for the cradle of God.

Taken house.There is a well -known photo of Diego: it is in the front of his house, supported on the wiring, with the long curlers as used by a good part of the 80s.In that photo the house is neat, with the forehead released, the cut grass and the cement little path that leads to the clear entrance door.

The reconstruction they made in blessed dream, the Amazon documentary, is very good.The sheet roofs that dripped the rainy days, the floor of the dirt, a kitchen and two bedrooms, one for the parents and the other for the eight brothers."But it is not real that the fluff was walking through the halls of the town, because here there were no halls, it was all going," says Claudio Villarruel.

That house, Fiorito's most famous, today is hard to recognize it.A tree without pruning invaded the siege from front, and a rickety plastic table and a mountain of debris give it a certain appearance of abandonment.From the wiring hangs a flag of Argentina with the legend "D10s" written with a black fibron.There is nothing to point out who lived here.A minimum metal platelet, which was placed on December 24, 2020, offers a track: “Thank you for having played football.The kids of versales ".From the path the mural that they painted on the front of the house is distinguished the day he died.

Maradona and the anniversary of a "Diego from within"

Claudio Villarruel hits his hands.Cambá appears, it approaches with a slow step.The united star leader tells him that he is with journalists, who are friends, who just want to take some photos.Cambá or respond: nods and enters again.With the authorization of the homeowner and without the collector in sight, the photo round starts.No one resists posing in the manger.

This is the house of dreams.Of the dream of the fluff, actually.The kid tired this same mud with a single pair of shoes, without a coca at the table and without bicycles on January 6.It is not difficult to imagine what he once confessed: “I dreamed of eating.It was not easy".He had another illusion, it is known, to win a World Cup, that black and white fantasy that was recorded in the collective memory.But that of the World Cup was a distant dream, the kid who lived in this house had another urgency: a dish with some meat.

One year.On November 25, 2020 this city was orphaned.But nobody expected the guy to resurrect the third day.This is not Naples, the paternal or Dubai.Here in Fiorito El Pelusa is an earthly God who dazzled the world with miracles that the neighbors had already discovered fifteen years before.

Fiorito is not abandoned in the same way that it is reached.Pelusa crosses any idea or prejudice that could be made from Maradona.To talk about Diego, it should be mandatory to know his neighborhood.Here is everything.Fiorito explains it.

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