You might love or hate Diego Maradona, but there’s one thing we can always credit him for: You do not get bored with him around. Ever. Therefore, if you didn’t find his arrival to Dorados exciting enough, here he comes again with another wave of entertainment.
Amazon Prime Video revealed the first images of its new TV series project, Maradona, based on Diego’s eternal soccer legacy and pretty stormy private life.
The show does not have a release date yet, but a good part of the cast has been confirmed already: Nicolas Goldschmidt will personify the idol during his early stages as a professional player for Argentinos Juniors, Nazareno Casero will be in charge of Diego’s golden years with Argentina’s national team and Juan Palomino will be coach Maradona leading Lionel Messi’s squad during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Actresses Laura Esquivel and Julieta Cardinali are also confirmed for Claudia Villafañe’s role, Diego’s wife for 26 years (1977-2003), that accompanied the idol since he was the world’s most promising player by the age of 17 to becoming an everlasting soccer legend and very likely the most famous person in the planet for over a decade.
BTF Media, a TV production company founded by Mexicans Francisco Cordero and Ricardo Coeto, with offices in the U.S., Mexico, and Spain, has an open casting for 5-13 year old kids and 16-18 year old teenagers to be young ‘Pelusa’ (Diego’s childhood nickname referring to his curly, unorganized hair).
I’m sure some might wonder if a soccer player’s life is enough to base an entire show on it, and that’s just a misconception. Diego is not a normal player nor a normal man; he’s like the ultimate soccer rockstar. His life offers more material than anyone I can think of (including rockstars!), seriously.
Let’s list just a few interesting moments of his life.
- Believe it or not, in Argentina there is a church that considers Maradona a god, “The Maradonian Church”.
- He played the entire 1990 World Cup, leading Argentina to the final, with a second grade ankle sprain.
- In 2000, he was chosen by the fans as the best soccer player of the XX century, on top of Pele and Alfredo Di Stefano.
- By the age of 10 he was already in the newspapers, Clarin wrote about a poor kid from a marginal neighborhood “Caradona” that seemed to be a soccer genius.
- By the age of 11, the club Argentinos Juniors had Maradona juggling with the ball at the stadium during halftime of the first team matches. The fans used to cheer “let the kid stay” as he was more entertaining than the team’s performance.
- He had his debut as a professional player in October 1976. He was 15 years old. His first professional ball touch was to nutmeg his marker.
- By the age of 20 he had already been the top goalscorer of the Argentinian league 5 times, a record that he still holds.
- On June 22, 1986, he scored two of most famous World Cup goals in history: The Hand of God and the Goal of the Century.
- A confessed drug addict, Maradona almost died in 2000, when he entered the ICU in Uruguay suffering from arrhythmia and hypertension. His manager at the time, Guillermo Coppola, declared that it was not a drug related issue, but blood work found traces of cocaine. A mass of Argentinian fans congregated at the hospital front door for days, lighting candles to pray for the idol’s recovery.
- In 2005, Diego (5-5 tall) weighed 264 pounds, a reason why he was surgically intervened with a gastric bypass to control his obesity. A few months later he had lost 110 pounds.
- In Napoli, Maradona is considered almost a saint, so his picture is usually placed right next to Saint Gennaro’s, the city’s guardian saint.
These are just a few of the amazing, crazy and unthinkable moments of Maradona’s life. Diego is an infinite flow of stories, miracles, falls and heroic recoveries. Maradona lives where the possible and the impossible meet. Sometimes reality is better than fiction, and Amazon Prime Video seems to know that very well.
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