Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #822481 in Books
• Published on: 1996-09-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The playing fields of the '80s and '90s are sadly littered with the unfulfilled promises of athletic greatness deterred by self-destruction. Soccer star Diego Maradona rose from the slums of Buenos Aires to teenage fame and a career that blazed its way across Europe before reaching apotheosis in the 1986 World Cup. That World Cup performance, in which Maradona raised his already magnificent game an impossible notch or two, elevated him to a sporting pantheon reached only by a supernatural handful: think Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, and Pelé. But, as biographer Jimmy Burns painfully details, the charismatic and stormy Maradona quickly lost everything to drugs, scandal, and corruption. Maradona's is a cautionary tale, and Burns relates it with charisma.

Synopsis
This is a biography of Diego Maradona, one of the world's most controversial and flamboyant sportsmen, arguably the greatest and certainly the most widely-known footballer of the modern age. During his tempestuous career he has played for top clubs in South America and Europe, and has been a central figure in four World Cups. With the fortunes he has earned from sponsorship and transfer deals, he has personified football, both as popular sport and big business. Jimmy Burns pursued his research in several countries on both sides of the Atlantic, gaining access to Maradona's inner circle, and to other key witnesses, such as players, managers, trainers, doctors and officials. The result is a story straddling the international scene, from the slums of Buenos Aires, where Maradona was born, to the huge stadiums of the United States from where, in 1994, he was ignobly expelled after undergoing a positive drugs test. In his rise to fame - and notoriety - Maradona played for some of the world's greatest teams: Boca Juniors, Napoli and Barcelona. He scored some brilliant goals - and cheated with others.

He provoked fans into a mass hysteria of adulation, and his enemies into sinister campaigns to destroy him. He made friends with the Mafia and became a cocaine addict. He betrayed as many friends as he made, and loved far too many women. Jimmy Burns is the author of "The Land That Lost Its Heroes", "Beyond the Silver River" and "Spain: A Literary Companion".

Customer Reviews

Superbly Told
In Hand of God Jimmy Burns superbly tells the sad and moving story of Maradona, the singular football genius who ended up becoming a simple drug addict.

Like countless millions of addicts before him Maradona's story is essentially that of wasted talent. Burns tells his story from childhood, and at his various clubs (chiefly Argentinos, Barcelona, Napoli, Seville), as well as the national side.

Despite his great talents, at very few points in his career did Maradona come close to fulfilling his potential, due to two factors: the systematic abuse of his body by club doctors trying to improve Maradona's physique or enable him to play with injuries, and his own excesses with drink, drugs and women.

As someone who, as an English football fan, despised Maradona for his poor sportsmanship and "Hand of God" goal, and thought he had had his comeuppance when he failed the drugs test in '94, having read this book I can now see that his behaviour was a manifestation of the sickness within him, and as such is to be pitied rather than reviled.