Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

SPORTS-ARGENTINA: Display of Maradona’s Glory Years to Tour World

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 20 2003 (IPS) - A travelling museum dedicated to Argentine football legend Diego Maradona, considered by many to be the best footballer of all time, will soon begin to tour the world.

The exhibit contains over 600 objects – valued at more than 10 million dollars – from his brilliant career.

Visitors to the Diego Armando Maradona Travelling Museum can see trophies, football shoes and shirts and other objects used by the player since his debut in the Argentinos Juniors club, and through the nearly 20 years that he wore the number 10 shirt on the Argentine national team.

The exhibit, which originally planned to tour a few cities in the world over the next three years, has received so many invitations – from countries like Japan, Italy, South Korea, Kuwait, Norway, Ireland, Vietnam and China – that it has a full agenda for the next 10 years.

The museum has already drawn more than 45,000 visitors since it opened this month in the Rural Association exposition centre in Buenos Aires.

On Nov. 15, it will set out on a tour of 15 Argentine cities. In March it heads to the Mexican capital and the cities of Guadalajara and Veracruz, and from there to Europe to join the 100th anniversary celebrations of FIFA (the international football federation) and the Olympic games in Greece.

The organisers said they were somewhat surprised at the success of the exhibit, since Maradona has been at the centre of a number of controversies and scandals in recent years due to his addiction to cocaine, his frequent clashes with local and international football authorities, and his sometimes radical views.

But a tour of the museum makes it clear that ”Numero 10”, as he is affectionately referred to by many in this Southern Cone country of 37 million, is still a national idol and an object of fervent devotion.

Maradona, 43, has been living in Cuba for the past three years, where he is under medical treatment for a severe heart condition, and is undergoing rehabilitation for drug abuse.

As they watch the images of Maradona’s most-famous moments flashed on a giant screen, adults and children alike appear to be gazing at an altar.

The first people to visit the exhibit actually fought among themselves to get the very first ticket, which had to be raffled off in the end, an employee at the ticket office told IPS, recalling that one of the fans actually had Maradona’s signature tattooed on his arm.

There are also fans who visit the museum every day, ”escaping from work for a while at lunch time,” while others carve out time on the weekend – or spend the whole weekend there, as in the case of ”one guy who stayed for 12 hours, and we had to attend him in the infirmary, because he hadn’t eaten anything,” says a security guard.

The museum director, Oscar Goldadler, told IPS that ”We weren’t thinking of inaugurating it here.

”We were going to do it in Barcelona, but we couldn’t reach an agreement, so we ended up launching it” in Buenos Aires, says Goldadler, who is co-financing the project with Claudia Villafañe, Maradona’s wife, who provided 99 percent of the objects on display.

In the past, Goldadler and Ernesto Texo have financed famous exhibits that have come to Buenos Aires, such as collections of works by Spanish artists Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, or the Kremlin treasures.

In 2002, while in Egypt in search of a new exhibit, they came up with the idea of mounting a museum with the thousands of objects that Villafañe – who visits the display every day – carefully and patiently collected throughout the career of ”El Diego”, as her husband likes to be called.

Photos, home videos and prizes also form part of the inventory of mementoes gathered for Dalma and Gianina, the couple’s two daughters.

Although Goldadler estimates the cost of the collection at 10 million dollars, another organiser told IPS that a group of Japanese investors had offered twice that amount for a single pair of Maradona’s famous football shoes.

Villafañe has been collecting mementoes since the 1970s, after Argentino Juniors gave Maradona the chance to demonstrate his skills when he was just a boy. His eight-year-old face peers out from his first club membership card.

Videos put to music show the high points – and low points – of Maradona’s career, like the moment when he was handed the World Cup trophy, as captain of the Argentine national team in 1986; his arrest on drug-related charges in 1991; and his return to football with the Sevilla club in Spain.

The exhibit also shows images from when he was kicked out of the 1994 World Cup in the United States after failing a doping test; photos reflecting his humble origins in the Villa Fiorito slum neighbourhood in Buenos Aires; and his return to Boca Juniors, the club he has sworn loyalty to since childhood.

The museum contains hundreds of medals and gold cups and balls of all sizes accumulated in Maradona’s years of glory. Among the trophies stands out a 1.3-metre golden sword he received in 1987 for participating in a match commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Al-Ahli club.

There are more than 150 shirts, worn by himself or by players who gave them to him as gifts. For example, the shirt he wore in 1977, when he made his debut on the Argentine national team at age 16, in a match with Hungary.

”Maradona is by far the best football player of all time, and I don’t think there will ever be anyone like him in the future,” says young Rubén Martínez as he gazes in awe at the shirts worn by ”Numero 10” in Argentinos Juniors from 1976 to 1981, before his transfer to Boca Juniors.

Martínez tells IPS that he believes Maradona was the best, even though he himself is a fan of River Plate, Boca’s rival. ”Maradona goes beyond any differences,” he says.

An Australian couple, standing nearby, agree. ”A fantastic player, the best in the world,” they comment, looking at a replica model of the humble home of the Maradona family in Villa Fiorito, where Diego was born in 1960.

Children under 10, who have never seen him play, are guided through the exhibit by their parents, to see concrete illustrations of the stories they have heard over and over. They gaze at the hero’s worn-out football shoes as if trying to unravel a secret.

Villafañe kept the pair Maradona wore when he started to play with Boca in 1981, and the ones he had on when he made the unforgettable goal against England in Mexico in 1986, considered the best World Cup goal of all times, according to a survey by Britain’s BBC.

Among the gifts that Maradona kept is an olive-green cap that he was given by Cuban President Fidel Castro on Oct. 30, 2001, when he turned 41.

Also on display is the jewel-studded, gold-buckled belt that he was given by another living football legend – Brazil’s Pelé, with whom Maradona disputes the unofficial title of world’s best player. Nearby is a red tie he received from the late rock singer Freddie Mercury of Queen.

”I don’t think there are many cases in which such an important museum like this one has opened while the person to whom it pays tribute was still alive. It’s good that this is happening, because it allows us to relive the happiness that Maradona gave us all these years, and to express our gratitude to him in his lifetime,” Elsa Vivas, 67, remarked to IPS.

But Maradona himself has not yet visited the exhibit, a moment that is eagerly awaited by the organisers.