Pelé died: with Diego Maradona, a relationship between love and hate

when Diego Maradona he met personally Pelé, who died this Thursday at the age of 82 in Brazil, this was a celebrity – he had recently retired from professional football – and that, the “young prodigy” who dreamed of inheriting it. And so it happened, given that Maradona, especially with the coronation of him in Mexico 86, was also the “King of Football” in its time. Also, as expected, the relationship between two superstars (and two egos) of such dimensions… planets would collide.

The twists in the Maradona-Pele relationship were the order of the day, and they lasted forever: every occasion was propitious for the intersection (an advertising event, a World Cup, an Argentina-Brazil, an interview, etc.) .

But that first meeting was actually a journalistic production organized by El Gráfico magazine on April 9, 1979 in the apartment that O Rei had in Rio de Janeiro.

The journalist Guillermo Blanco and the (legendary) photographer Ricardo Alfieri documented that meeting, in which Pelé also played the guitar, signed autographs for Diego, gave him a Brazil shirt and advised him: “Take care of your body, it is essential for this, you have many in your family to help.

Diego, months earlier, had suffered a frustration for not having played in the ’78 World Cup – won by Argentina – and then expressed: “Meeting Pelé was the World Cup I didn’t have.”

For more than a decade, and beyond the traditional football rivalry between Argentines and Brazilians, the relationship between Diego and Pelé has been cordial. Then it began to deteriorate. It reached personal grievance, in which Pelé scolded Diego for his doping cases and stressed that “he is a very bad example for the new generations”. And the answer was just as harsh, from the allusion to the “alleged sexual debut” I quarreled with a teenager until I qualified him as an “establishment man” (given to the powerful).

In a 2000 interview, Pelé was seen as tougher: “In Brazil there are many players like Maradona or better. Before talking to me, Maradona should ask permission from Sócrates, Tostao, Zico, Rivelino, Romario and other Brazilian players. And after talking to them, I should ask permission from Moreno and Di Stéfano among the Argentines.”

A little earlier he had told El Gráfico that “I wanted to save Diego, I don’t like seeing him badly. I offered him to come to Santos, he was with me at the club. We locked ourselves inside and said everything we had to say to each other. The Maradona I had known as a young man emerged, the outspoken and likeable boy who likes football. We play paddle tennis. We entered into an $8 million contract.”

And he added: “But when he returned to Buenos Aires, his friends They didn’t let it be done with us. They asked us for 12 million, knowing we couldn’t pay it. At Santos I would have been surrounded by affection. We just wanted him to be calm, teaching how to play football. We missed a wonderful opportunity.”

However, when it came to personal encounters, the original warmth returned. For example, in 2005, Pelé was one of Diego’s guests when he gave him his program on Channel 13, “La noche del Diez”. Precisely for the debut program, on August 15, Pelé arrived as a special guest with his blue card, shirt with Mao collar and a guitar, with which he sang a song composed by himself.

Diego tried a tango a capella, and then they got into a fun question and answer. “Who put sleeping pills in Branco’s bottle at the 1990 World Cup?” Pele was encouraged to ask. “I didn’t go,” Diego replied. “It will say the syn, but not the name of the synner”.

But two years later the Brazilian attacks: “The best player I’ve ever seen behind Pelé… is Di Stéfano. Pele? There will never be another one, because my parents closed the factory”. When the World Cup in South Africa was approaching, and Diego led the Argentine national team, he was criticized – technically – by Pelé, after the sensational elimination against Germany.

His answer: “I would ask Pelé (and Platini) to look at the ball a bit sometime, to dedicate himself to see if it’s good or bad, and to stop talking nonsense about me”.

In mid-2016, they coincided in an advertising campaign in Paris. And they sealed the peace: “No more quarrels” Diego told him, embracing him. Microphone in hand, he said: “I want to thank Pelé exclusively for being with the players, we need a figure like him.”

And O’Rei completed: “I want to have a message of peace and tranquility, thanks to my friend Maradona.”