Diego Maradona
A: Biography, drama
Director: Asif Kapadia
Cast: Diego Maradona
Rating: 

British director Asif Kapadia has scored a classic field goal thanks to a fine assist from editor Chris King, with Diego Maradona, the third part of his trilogy on child geniuses, following (Aryton) Senna in 2010 and Amy (Winehouse) in 2015.

The film opens with a car chase as Maradona's vehicle heads to the San Paolo Stadium in Naples, Italy, where the Argentine football legend is unveiled to the press and public as a Napoli player on July 5, 1984. At the press conference, one reporter asks Maradona if he knew that Italian football was funded by the Camorra, a crime syndicate. The club president slams the scribe and expels him, claiming that all is well in Italian football. But that was far from the truth, as the movie reveals later that Camorra boss Carmine Giuliano used Maradona's eventual fame at the club to promote his business and in exchange, presented the mercurial footballer with a gold Rolex watch each time he appeared for commercial engagement. Napoli were a low-lying team in the most competitive Serie A (Italian football league), so the crowd of 85,000 that came to welcome Maradona, saw him as a saviour. And he did save them, by delivering the title in 1986-87 and 1989-90. Unfortunately, what transpired off the field in between, caused irreparable damage to Maradona. The football star, in a voiceover, admits that he began taking drugs at a nightclub while playing for Barcelona (1982-84) and continued it at Napoli as "drugs were freely available there."