Lionel Messi will step onto the field at New York New Jersey Stadium on Sunday with history at his feet. Defending the World Cup is rare enough, but captaining a nation to back-to-back wins is undeniable.
Messi is the successor to Diego Maradona, Argentina’s previous World Cup-winning captain and still regarded by many as the greatest player the game has ever known, a claim that weakens every time Messi breaks new ground.
Maradona is still as iconic as a footballer can get, beloved by millions precisely because of his human imperfections. He passed away in 2020, two years before Messi lifted the World Cup trophy.
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‘Maradona is Maradona’
Messi might not have the same personality as his Argentina forebear but there was a little bit of Maradona in Al-Ittifaq striker Mario Balotelli, who made his name at Inter Milan before firing his fame into the stratosphere during an extraordinary spell in England with Manchester City.
Balotelli won the Premier League and FA Cup with City, where he played 31 times with Messi’s international teammate, and Maradona’s former son-in-law, Sergio Aguero. He even set up the Argentine’s famous ‘Agueroooooo’ goal that won City the title in 2012.
“I met him through Aguero in his time at City,” said the former Italy striker talking to AwayDays’ Ellis Platten whilst shopping for retro shirts at Classic Football Shirts New York store. “And it was funny because I asked Sergio, ‘Give me Maradona’s number so I can speak with him’.
“And he gave me the number, and the first thing I sent him was a picture of me with a Cuban [cigar]. And he sent me a picture back of himself with a Cuban, also.”
Maradona, who is ranked at no.3 in FourFourTwo’s list of the greatest players of all time, led Argentina to World Cup glory in Mexico in 1986 before delivering the Serie A title twice in a famous spell with Napoli.
‘El Pibe de Oro’ starred for Napoli in between spells in Spain with Barcelona and Sevilla. He ended his career back at Boca Juniors, where he played in the early 1980s, and left international football in disgrace after failing a drug test at the World Cup in 1994.
“Maradona is Maradona,” added Balotelli, who was born in Sicily months after Napoli’s second Scudetto in 1990.
Balotelli has been well travelled in his career, taking in Liverpool and Nice as well as spells in Italy with AC Milan, Brescia, Monza and Genoa. He had a short stint at Sion in Switzerland in between two at Turkish club Adana Demirspor.
Now 35, the Italian is at Al-Ittifaq in the United Arab Emirates who he joined in January. His manager there until June was former Juventus defender Paolo Montero and he’s averaging a goal every two league games.