Second Screening is a series where we get Andrew, or maybe someone else, to be honest, to rewatch a classic match featuring teams and players that people always talk about but have never actually watched 90 minutes of. Take it away Mr Martin...
The first job I ever did for MUNDIAL was to drive three of the team around the lowlands of Europe in a rental car so that they could interview various football luminaries about Ronaldo (the proper one) and his time at PSV Eindhoven. The first thing one of my travelling companions did when we sat down in the car before we’d even left the rental place in Brussels was to put his music on shuffle at full volume, so we sat in a fucking Enterprise or whatever it was, listening to Biggie Smalls vociferously shagging Lil’ Kim.
“Right then, should I just stick ‘Maastricht’ into Google Maps and see where it…”
You chronic smokin', Oreo cookie eatin', pickle juice drinkin'
The vibe had been set, and I liked it. The thing is, I got too comfortable. Too confident. After stopping off in Maastricht, Belgium, we headed into the Netherlands and were discussing Diego Armando Maradona when I—having been born a few months after the Italia ‘90 World Cup—said, “Well, he was just a drugs cheat, wasn’t he?”
A moment’s silence, a glare I could physically feel in my right temple, and that same travelling companion told me to pull over the car so that we could have a square go in the verge at the side of the road. I laughed. He didn’t. I kept driving—mainly because we were in traffic, partly because I didn’t fancy getting sparked out in suburban Holland on my first day on the job. They were joking … They were probably joking … But I learned something important that day:
You’d better not leave your grocery list lying around near Lil’ Kim because she will recite it to you mid-shag.
So, here I am, settling down to watch 90 glorious minutes of El Diego. If you’re roughly my age or younger, you’ve almost certainly never seen Maradona play a full match. You’ve seen the highlights, you’ve seen the Asif Kapadia biopic, but you’ve never watched him organically. I’m limited to what the internet has to offer, but, gods be good, YouTube has served up Napoli v Juventus from March 1987. This was the season that Maradona led Napoli to their first ever Serie A title, seeing off Juve by just three points in the end (in the two-points-for-a-win era). This game, then, was a huge moment in football history and one that would ultimately lead to Diego’s deification in Naples.
He’s 26 here, in his physical prime, and I can’t wait. Let’s take a look at the team sheets:
