Diego Maradona (2019) Review

So last week the world was given the news that Football legend Diego Maradona had passed away at the age of 60 and it has had a big impact on the football world. I am a huge football fan but I think being a younger person I have never fully understood just how important Maradona was, I knew he was a great player and he scored a goal with his hand against England but I neglected everything else and now is my time to catch up. So I started with watching this documentary called Diego Maradona that came out just last year so is a pretty modern telling of his story and here is my review for it. 

So first things first is Maradona on the pitch and this film does a superb job of showing just how talented a player he was, some of the things that he does is outrageous and compares to players like Messi and Ronaldo now. The film also does a great job in showing how football has changed, the tackles he receives is absurd and the pitches are terrible showing just how gifted a player he was. 

Over the last week we have seen the whole country of Argentina and the city of Naples in huge mourning over Maradona and this documentary does a great job in showing why. He basically won the world cup on his own for Argentina and won the Italian League twice for Napoli, you really understand why these people saw him as God, he was easily the best player and he was treated like it. 

The film shows that there were two different people Diego & Maradona and from what we have heard in the last week that was true. Diego was a innocent and nice person who was really easy to get along with but Maradona was the winner, the man who has to push himself to be the best and become the best player that he can possibly be and the film documents that well. 

Maradona has plenty of demons that is clear and the film does a pretty good job and doesn't ignore them. It highlights the difficulties that he has had in his life and how when Maradona takes over Diego it caused terrible things in his life which maybe tarnishes his reputation a bit. 

My one criticism of the film is that it is a bit narrow in terms of its storytelling, I mean it totally glosses over the crazy time he had at Barcelona, quickly covers The Hand Of God and ignores his failed drug test at the 1994 World Cup. Maybe this film could have been better as a mini series of like 4 episodes in order to fully tell the story and flesh out the story which I would have been totally here for. 

Overall, this is a fantastic documentary, looking at one of the biggest characters in Football and the highs and lows of his career. If you are like me and don't think you know enough about Maradona this is a great way to start. 

Rating - 9/10