Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil...”
I have heard talk, in recent times, of legacy.
The suggestion is that one should be mindful of one’s legacy.
By implication, you should live life with one and a half eyes firmly fixed on legacy.
I listened to Mike Tyson in an interview today talking to Eddie Hearn of the BBC. He is fighting Roy Jones this weekend. The interviewer asked him about his mistakes; the decisions he wishes he could make again. You can listen to Mike’s answer here, but it concedes an eternal truth: history does not reveal its alternatives.
It is what it is.
Which brings me to Diego Armando Maradona.
Not that long ago, I gave Kevin his first job as my personal assistant. During this time we had many arguments because that’s how I am. I seek conflict and I work to destroy the opposite. If it survives, I examine it for the why.
Kevin was a Maradona fan; I was for Pele.
To be clear here, by this time I was no novice in Athletic Performance. I had already achieved what will eventually be accepted as one of the greatest athletic performances of all time. I had made my peace with perceptions, appeased my ego, and moved on.
Diego was not only known, but dear to me. But should he be in the final conversation?
Once again, yes; he is at the top table. And of the diners there who should stay after the Port? A shadowy dark figure in the background, or a more defined, tortured soul in the fore?
I’ll pause to address the view of modernity. Namely Messi and Ronaldo. Neither have held aloft the symbol of world conquest, let alone contested it twice.
Five hundred feet straight and level. Eighty knots max doors off, camera crew off, replaced by two soldiers from the guard, camera mount still bolted on.
A black plume of smoke is on the horizon slowly rising. Signaling something, right it is not.
Burning Black, you cannot see. Friends, for sure, have lived and died here. The approach is with the wind to your back. Work the pedals, cyclic hits the stops. How much further can we pull on this collective? We hit the ground.
Figures run at you from the smoke. In an instant you realise you are alive and the men you have brought here to this hell are bringing men out. Time to go.
Not everyone was guilty, not everyone innocent. As is often the case, guilt and innocence lived together in discomfort.
Harold had been on a training flight with two students when he noticed drug smugglers loading an aircraft on a makeshift (illegal) airstrip. I was flying a film crew over the main army base, taking footage for a promotional video. We spoke on the radio. The crime was in progress, what could we do? A plan quickly formed. I ditched the film crew and took onboard two members of the guard and we headed to the training area. What’s the max airspeed with the doors off? Should I have waited to put them on, to fly faster? Which is quicker? History does not reveal its alternatives.
“They are taking off.”
“Anything you can do to delay them?”
“Hold on.”
The last words I heard from Harold.
Then the black plume rose on the horizon. Fuck the airspeed. Cyclic forward, collective up.
Harold’s solution was to land and block the runway. The smugglers were determined to leave, and the aircraft met mid runway. Harold and Don died in this instance. Dudley lived to die another day.
And what of Diego? Harold died one month to the day after we watched together the most notorious and the best goals scored in World Cup football. Both scored in the space of four minutes and by the same man. After that game, two Jamaican footballing icons, Dennis Ziadie and Jackie Bell, were killed in a motor vehicle accident in Mexico while travelling to see the great man in his next game. Had they lived, they would have borne witness to the emergence of a will, that in football, surpassed all others.
England versus Argentina, World Cup Quarter finals, 1986. Unlike Argentina, the English started with their best player on the bench. I am sure there was a reasonable explanation for this. By the time John Barnes saw action the game was all but gone. He immediately created two gilt edged chances, one of which Gary Lineker converted, flatter to deceive.
The referee (an African) was lambasted for incompetence, and Maradona saw the work of God. It was illegal, but as I was later to discover first hand, the rules are never what is written. Only by play and observation can you determine the rules of the Game. Another official, a Russian linesman, gave England their only world cup triumph by raising his flag, At the Azteca, the Bulgarian linesman’s flag stayed down. We do not see with our eyes. What we see is an impression created by our brain, and there is a lot going on in there.
On a pitch where most struggled to stand, Diego danced. You have seen the footage. The football loved him; his relationship with a ball is like none I have ever seen. An Argentine journalist in summing up Diego said, and I paraphrase, “in Argentina we have two kinds of footballers: those of immense toughness and those of immense skill. In Maradona both met.”
A man of many weaknesses (always the caveat), but could he be without those faulty bits? Should we take the Diego out of the Maradona? I think not.
For me, the GOAT. Adios amigo.
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