Killing Maradona How cocaine,the Camorra, cartels and crime corrupted football’s greatest talent Author: DavidArrowsmithISBN-13: 9781788406154Publisher: Octopus Publishing Group ISBN:Guideline Price: £€22Football fans will understand when I say that on the Field of Immortals stands two perfect numbers: 10 and 14, Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff; both players essential to ideas of the beautiful game, they shaped football matches like poets shape verses. Anyone viewing Maradona and Cruyff footage understands what’s occurring, and yet it is also inexplicable; it overtakes you, you’re seduced by a spirit of imagination. David Arrowsmith has captured something of that spirit in his superlative Maradona biography (Auke Kok’s Always on the Attack did something similar with Cruyff a few years ago). In fact Arrowsmith has played “the perfect game”, creating one of the finest sports books in years. If you’ve read biographies on Maradona previously (including his idiosyncratic autobiography) and watched Asif Kapadia’s excellent documentary, then you’ll be familiar with much material here for obvious reasons. Kapadia’s film focused on Maradona’s time in Naples and its mafia (the Camorra) though, and Maradona was still alive when the other books appeared. Arrowsmith’s work is a cradle-to-grave account, relating Maradona’s sad and avoidable death aged just 60 in 2020; this book gives us the end of the string that once made a golden ball. What also makes Killing Maradona stand out is in Arrowsmith’s telling: writing in the present tense, frequently switching objective voice to that of Diego’s own mind, and clever, nonlinear structure. Diego feels fresh again, magical in his glory, naked in his tragedy, always alive with a cinematic pulse. Arrowsmith goes deeper than what has gone before, too, on and off the field, and the latter is a key part to the sad ending of this story as his subtitle attests. When the author describes many of the people around Maradona you reach a deeper understanding and sympathy for the insane pressures he was always under; darkness forever surrounded his flame. We’re given Diego with all his freakish flaws, and yet the heart still breaks for him.This is the one book you need on football’s greatest No 10: Maradona as a saviour for millions of fans, who gave life to people (in Argentina and Naples especially), yet could not save himself. A colossus on the pitch who did not have the strength to survive away from it. Love football? You love Maradona. You’ll love this, too.NJ McGarrigle is a journalist and critic from Co Tyrone