30 years since Maradona arrived in Seville to return to football

Conversation on a euphoric summer day of 1992, that of the Olympic Games of Barcelona and the Expo at Seville and that has just completed 30 years this 2022. In the Andalusian capital, he is still acclimatizing Charles Bilardo. Busy time, called up and down for agents, one of the best known, Joseph Maria Minguella, making an ‘indecent proposal’ to Sevilla’s famous new manager.

-Carlos, I can bring you Diego-, ‘Mingui’ let him go calmly.

And Carlos, although always tough but returned to everything at 53 years old, ‘shocked’ by the colors.

-You are crazy! Of course he can come, you don’t have to ask me that! What a wonder, but here there is no ‘silver’, we cannot pay…

The ‘silver’ is leadership in Minguella, another phenomenon, in this case of impossible operationsdefender of Maradona’s arrival at Barça a decade earlier.

In Naples enraptured, Argentina in love and the world conquered, whatever he did, Diego Armando Maradona I will not fall into oblivion. Despite the fact that his disordered tendencies buried him in temporary retirement. In April 1991, His anarchic and dark life outside football entered the pitch, where everything was idyllic: positive for cocaine in an anti-doping test and severe punishment from FIFA: 15 months without playing.

But Maradona is still reluctant to become a memory, not to add more plays to that gallery of his iconic images revered as copies until now and forever. He looked forward to the 1994 World Cup but it burdened him without playing, his age – on the way to 32 years-, and a few extra kilos, the only patch for ‘El Diego’ of his genetics conceived exclusively for football. Therefore, because he is the eye of the football, because he can also make a difference just by looking without having to run, he can continue to play as long as he wants. He shows it now in his reincarnation, Leo Messi.

“After not playing for so long, I was devastated,” Minguella warned in the conversation with MD. “Diego wants to leave Naples, he’s been there for a long time, it’s hard for him during the sanctions to do nothing at 10 in the morning and his life is a total zig-zag. His agent, Marcos Franco, my contact. In May 1992 or so, we talked to FIFA because in June his sanction expired and we wanted to move his departure before the deadline was reached,” Minguella said.

Fate was not as important as the desire to leave that Naples which had showered him with titles and talents and raised him to the category of divinity, with a cult that remained at the altar dedicated to the ’10’ of Nile Barin the zone murals of Quarter Spagnoli and in any corner of the city. But, as the Camorra competition in Sicily would say in that famous film, Minguella would offer him which I cannot refuse.

“The only thing Maradona wanted was to play football again in another club. To be offered to go to the team coached by Carlos Bilardo, where he became the champion of the World Cup in Argentina in 1986, became decisive,” featuring the former Catalan mediator. ‘Fluff’ will return to earth with the same man he was with when climbing to the top of the planet with the albiceleste.

But what about money? because they are 750 million pesetas at that time -4.5 million euros-, what Napoli pocketed for him and Sevilla’s safe has only ‘small change’ for a transfer of that caliber. “The then president of Sevilla, Luis Cuervashe was a very good friend of mine, he invited me to his booth for the April Fair and I suggested that I bring Maradona,” Minguella recalled.

“José María, we can’t pay anything,” Cuervas replied resignedly.

“If I bring you Maradona, can’t you organize six friendly matches in two years?” the agent replied.

-Of course.

Minguella, an innovator in the financing of transfers, used his author’s formula, which is the payment for an operation using the money obtained from the income of television rights for friends and that he had already applied when ‘Pelusa’ arrived at Barça in 1982, as he explained in his book ‘Minguellaleaks’. The Barça club then had to pay 6 million dollars to his original club, Argentine Juniors, and 2 in mouth, that he has a share of his rights.

The first of six friendships, matches Bayern Munich at Sánchez Pizjuán, it meant the long-awaited return of Maradona, as well as his performance in Sevilla. Remarkably ironic, the one who bought all the friends was Telecinco. Because its owner is the person who offered Diego a blank check to take it to Milan: Silvio Berlusconi.

But before Maradona became a sevillista, it remained a draw Corrado Ferlainothe president and iron negotiator of a Naples with which ‘Cosmic Kite’ had a contract until 1993. The negotiations lasted three months in an endless summer series until they were resolved on September 22 -9 days after the landing of ’10’ in Seville-, in Zurich, FIFA headquarters. That last meeting was attended by Ferlaino, the president of the Andalusian club, Luis Cuervas, with a young Of the nest as vice president and three mediators: Joseph Blatter -Then secretary general of FIFA-, the president of the Spanish Federation, Angel Maria Villar and his Italian counterpart Antonio Matarrese.

“Ferlaino was against it at first because he didn’t want to assume that he would lose Maradona, but then he agreed to talk after 10 days. We agreed with him a symbolic amount that did not reach half a million dollars to be released him. If they have extended the negotiations so much it is also because of Maradona and because there is many formalities after he passes a punishment. There was no problem with the transfer”, recalls Josep Maria Minguella, who recovered from the fear after Maradona’s first transfer in which he was involved, sent him to Barcelona in 1982, when the president of Argentinos Juniors, the commissioner. Sunday Teson -aligned with Videla’s dictatorship-, planted the pistol he kept under his armpit on the negotiating table. “Very heavy, you know?” he reasoned with Minguella’s stupor.

The most curious clause of Maradona’s new contract with Sevilla -which he signed for one year and another optional-, is the prohibition to sign with any Italian club for the next two years, much to the individual’s horror. Ferlain. But the most surprising of all is the threat of farewell by Maradona, who threatened quit football days before the resolution of his signing due to the delay of the same. But more noise than nuts. “He doesn’t want to leave football anytime soon, he’s just interested in playing and he’s going to take it seriously,” Minguella said.

And where said, Diego said to himself. The transfer is closed September 22 and after he made his return to the green a reality in the friendly against Bayern, Maradona will have a kind of encounter with a fateful moment from his past when he debuted in an official Sevilla match against Athletic in San Mamés with the memory of the blow of goikoetxea, retired. That game would not end well either with a 2-1 win for the lions, but the first league match at Pizjuán against Zaragoza would be perfect: a win with their goal (1-0). Although most remembered, in a gesture that defined his sense of genius, he began to hold a ball of aluminum foil before taking a corner.

Maradona’s ambitious plans, with promises contained in details such as calling his physical trainer, Ferdinand Signorini to strengthen his physique, they suggested something great in Seville, something great to do like Naples when he arrived in 1984, also a city from the south. And to his cronies, an interesting striker project like Davor Sucker, a child and hunger Diego Simeon and idols of the earth like Manolo Jimenez and Monchi, with the intense Carlos Bilardo at the helm. Intermittent and insufficient flashes of the quality of the ’10’ and his 7 goals in 29 games, Sevilla, seventh, did not even enter Europe.

Folksy as all his life, ‘Pelusa’ soon won the love of everyone in the club and the city, but the seductive Sevillian night confused him, flirting with cocaine he struggled and accumulated no-shows in practice. He clashed with Bilardo in the penultimate game in Burgos for replacing him in the second half and he did not play in the end and the club opened a file on him for going to play a friendly in Argentina and missing a league against.

He also put a detective to check if his life off the green conflicts with the life of a footballer and, if so, fine him. Spicier for the fictional narrative surrounding Maradona, who continued his story at Newell’s after just one year in the Andalusian capital and did not renew in June. The summer that lingered in the middle of the hangover exhibition just finished the next one. ‘Fluff’ made the perfect definition of Bulalakaw. Because the appearance of the divine Maradona in Seville was fleeting, but real.