Do we like Diego Maradona?
Our score: 5 out of 10. A real kind streak and one clear slur sit next to a shooting conviction and an undecided abuse allegation, so it's a split decision.
Maradona rose from the poor outskirts of Buenos Aires to become the best-known footballer of his era, and Napoli turned him into a local saint after he signed there in the 1980s. He died on 25 November 2020, aged 60. Few athletes were so loved for so long by a city that saw one of its own on the pitch.
The legal side is messy. In 1994 he shot at reporters outside his country home with an air rifle, wounding a photographer in the hand and ribs. He was sentenced in 1998 to more than two years, suspended, and a judge later ordered him to pay the photographer $15,000.
The Italian tax saga ran for roughly 30 years. Prosecutors alleged he used Liechtenstein proxy companies to dodge tax on image-rights payments from Napoli. In December 2023, Italy's Court of Cassation overturned a 2018 verdict, and his lawyer told Reuters he was never a tax evader.
The serious one is the alleged abuse. In November 2021 a Cuban woman said at a Buenos Aires news conference that Maradona raped her when she was 16, and she gave evidence to an Argentine court probing alleged trafficking by his former entourage. Reuters reported no charges or findings, and he can no longer answer it, so it stays an allegation.
On the harm check, the one thing we could confirm is the 2018 World Cup, where he yelled the Spanish slur “puto” on live TV after Argentina scored. Critics online called it out, and PinkNews reported no apology. We found no verified record in the pages we read on climate, vaccines or campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights, so that's honestly the whole list.
The good stuff is real. Early at Napoli he reportedly paid the club's insurance release himself so he could play a benefit match on a potato field for a sick child's operation. Roughly 10,000 fans turned up and it raised about £8,000.