Tracking Maradona Across World Cups And Continents

Journalist and author Rex Gowar, who tracked Diego Maradona across continents and World Cups, on a very special relationship

- Milan Sime Martinic

We are in August 1980, in the pleasant, middle-class Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Paternal. No. 2257, Lascano Street is a plain style house of predictable form, flat wall on one edge of the sidewalk.

In the neighborhood is the home ground of Argentinos Juniors, Diego Maradona’s first club. “The club grounds are very small; there is just a brick wall on one end,” recalls Rex Gowar, who followed the legend's career as a journalist from close quarters. “He lights the place up whenever he plays. It is a small club with no real claim to fame other than having discovered him. Later, on the Maradona transfer money, they built themselves a much better club.”

Outside the club, a fan has an old car painted in the team colours, predominantly red with some white. “The car even has a telephone—don’t know if it is working. I take a picture of Maradona holding the receiver to his mouth, with the wire coming out of the car,” recalls Gowar.

Back to the house.

La Paternal is an unpretentious barrio, named after an insurance company that built working-class homes at the turn of the century. The house is two-toned, speckled magenta rising about waist-high, an almost-white faded yellow, also speckled, on top; two windows on the sides, a narrow door in the centre, burglar bars with a simple geometric design protecting the windows and door, all on a row of houses joined together by their side walls.