Macron showing again that he’s tone deaf... using Maradona’s death to try and wind up the English. If the Daily Heil is to be believed.
The Elysee hailed Maradona's contribution in 'the most geopolitical match in football history' - Argentina's 2-1 win over England in the 1986 World Cup, four years after the Falklands War.
www.dailymail.co.uk
Google translation of the Elysée statement...
The hand of God had placed a football genius on earth. She just took it back from us, with an unforeseen dribble that cheated all our defenses. Did she want, by this gesture, to settle the debate of the century: is Diego Maradona the greatest football player of all time? The tears of millions of orphans respond to it today with painful evidence.
Born in a poor suburb of Buenos Aires, Diego Armando Maradona makes his family and his neighborhood dream with his leg passes which will soon crucify the best European defenders. Boca juniors and the legendary derbies reveal it in world football. It was Barcelona who took the diamond, believing they had finally found Johan Cruyff's successor to once again dominate European football.
But it was in Naples that Diego became Maradona. In southern Italy, the pibe de oro rediscovers the excessiveness of South American stadiums, the irrational fervor of the supporters and takes Naples on the Scudetto road, to the rooftops of Europe. The mezzogiorno has its revenge on history and it is only Platini's reinforcement that will see Juventus once again on a level playing field with their historic rivals.
Sumptuous and unpredictable player, Maradona’s football had nothing to say about it. With ever-renewed inspiration, he was constantly inventing gestures and strikes from elsewhere. A crampon dancer, not really an athlete, more an artist, he embodied the magic of the game.
But he still had to write the history of a country scarred by dictatorship and military defeat. This resurrection took place in 1986, in the most geopolitical match in football history, a World Cup quarter-final against Margaret Thatcher's England. On June 22, 1986, in Mexico City, he scored his first goal with God for a teammate. The miracle is disputed, but the referee saw nothing: Maradona's sense of the brouffe snatches the point. Then follows "the goal of the century", which summons the spirits of football's greatest dribblers: Garrincha, Kopa, Pelé united in one action. Over 50 meters, in a mind-blowing race, he passed half of the English team, dribbled past goalkeeper Shilton before sending the ball into the net and Albiceleste into the last four of the World Cup. In the same match, god and devil, he scored the two most famous goals in football history. There was a King Pelé, there is now a God Diego.
With the same grace, the same superb insolence, he sneaks up to the final which he marks with the most beautiful gesture in football: the decisive pass, the goal of the number 10. When he lifts the trophy, a myth is created. born: the enfant terrible has become the best player in the world. And the World Cup returns to Argentina: this time it's the people's, not the generals.
This taste of the people, Diego Maradona will also live it off the field. But his expeditions to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez will taste like a bitter defeat. It was on the pitches that Maradona made the revolution.
The President of the Republic salutes this undisputed sovereign of the round ball that the French have loved so much. To all those who saved their pocket money to finally complete the Panini Mexico 1986 album with its sticker, to all those who tried to negotiate with their partner to baptize their son Diego, to his Argentinian compatriots, to the Neapolitans who drew frescoes worthy of Diego Rivera in his effigy, to all football lovers, the President of the Republic sends his heartfelt condolences. Diego remains.