Maradona and the “shots” that could not be counted: Coppola’s series and the chapter of the farewell match

Coppola, the representative, has an exceptional “actor” who serves to summarize the spirit of the series: a majestic peacock who lives with the protagonist in his apartment.

The Star+ production is an irreproachable fantasy, a comedy with laughable moments. The plausibility of the facts does not matter, whether they happened or whether they fall into the category of dubious popular anecdotes. In a creature like this it doesn’t even matter whether what is told is true. The Big Fish by Tim Burton.

The day Maradona played his farewell match at the Bombonera, Coppola was already fed up. Or at least that’s what this story directed by Ariel Winograd shows. A goodbye that would drag on another imminent goodbye.

The back room that afternoon made the white-haired man’s patience explode. A fierce divorce that matured over a slow flame, between bouts of fury and material damage.

The hours preceding the day of the “unstained ball” were not the calmest for the awardee’s entourage. While Lothar Matthaeus, Carlos Valderrama, Davor Suker, Hristo Stoichkov, Eric Cantona and Pelé They were housed in the same walls, Maradona was a beast fighting against his demons.

The sixth and final chapter describes excess, transgression at its darkest point and wear and tear. Tell without showing it a Maradona destroyer of hotels and houses. That November 2001, in real life, the Hilton sisters knocked on the door of Coppola’s suite. Guillermo himself told it years ago. In fiction, the Walton sisters invite the manager to leave the hotel and never return. El Ten was “shooting” a paintball “weapon”.

Paint bullets, bad aim, injured eyes, plastered walls. The American platinum card of “Guillote” came to cover the enormous preparations, but the anger of the hotel chain tycoons did not subside. And the scandal was covered up.

The episode (from the name Fireworks) does not skimp on exaggerations and ingredients to provoke laughter. It uses the resource of a melody deeply rooted in the Argentine spectator of the Eighties: the unmistakable music of Dr. Socolinsky’s program, The health of our children (Lucien Belmond’s theme is called Fresh air).

Juan Minujín’s Coppola drinks Ron Collins, buys a box of brain ravioli with pesto on credit, refuses to continue watching Ten evacuate “with the bathroom door open”… Minujín is meticulous in drawing his gestures and gives the character something as cartoonish as it is captivating.. As if he “washed away” the original protagonist’s guilt and gave him a veneer of humanity and grotesqueness.

The other destruction that comes to light in the same chapter: that of the rented house in Barrio Parque (2002) that had belonged to Mirtha Legrand. “A fault in the electrical system caused a fire. The fire broke out in the sauna on the first floorand then spread to a dressing room and bedrooms,” it was later said “officially” in the news. It took firefighters almost two hours to put out the fire.

Fiction reveals another version. In this episode Coppola rents the impressive property to Judge Monaldi (Gerardo Romano) and El Diez wreaks havoc on the walls, furniture and artwork. Orgies, foam, anonymous people hanging from ceiling lights and flames devouring the villa and the exclusive Slovenian oak floor.

The tragedy that wasn’t precipitated in divorce. A dejected Coppola ends the commercial-emotional relationship between representative and customer.

It deserves a separate mention hiring a caretaker for Maradona in 2001, one of comedy’s high points. “Guillote” interviews a guy (Alan Sabbagh) with experience in “temples” like Coyote, Puente Mitre, Pizza Banana, Ku. “He asks you to take care of him from the lack of control with the “molluscs”, from the sockets, from the waxed floors, from the corners of the furniture, from the door handles, from the naps in the pool. The desperate list of secret protection missions related to “toenails” and “dwarves”.

You can already smell the second and third seasons. An unfathomable being like Coppola, being part of the life of another even more unfathomable being (Maradona) requires more scenes, more chapters, more blood. GP, the one who smoked underwater, is inexhaustible and impeccable in height.