From one legend to another – Guyanese Eddy Grant pays to Argentina’s Diego Armando Maradona

Nov 29, 2020 Sports

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Kaieteur News – During the late to mid 60’s I was very involved in playing football. I was the captain of my school’s football team. With four of my brothers, we played consistently, serious football.
So, by the time I would’ve gotten into music, football ran like water off of a ducks back through me. We were playing football every single day, including Sundays. After a time, the Ice Records football team started to compete in the Music Industry’s Football competition; that was a very serious competition, it was so serious, that the major companies like EMI and Warner would pay professionals of the past or semiprofessionals, to play in their teams, whereas Ice Records, my little company team basically had myself, my brothers Rudy, Brian and Alpine and we put in some of our close friends to make up the eleven.

We won the first cup competition of that nature.
We played a lot of Charity football, especially Rudy who was well known by a lot of the Professional players as being very good. Being the eldest one, I knew of the great players of
Europe like Ferenc Puskas, Sir Stanley Matthews and some of the then current ones like Jimmy
Greaves, George Best and Dennis Law, people like this. From the South Americans, of course,
Pele was the king of all kings, because he had decimated the whole world by the age of seventeen in Sweden’s world cup of 1958. I also got to know of players from Brazil like the great Garrincha, Didi, and Vava. From Argentina, I got to know, in the later years, Mario Kempes, Passarella, Tarrantini Leopoldo Luque; people like Ozzie Ardiles and Ricky Villa, people who came to England to play.
My life was circumscribed by football, soccer as the Americans call it today. I had heard through the grapevine in the 1970s, that there was a kid who was not necessarily playing serious football matches yet but that he was a football wizard who entertained the public during intermissions at first division football matches and he was very young and his name was
Maradona. Everyone just called him “Maradona”. It took a while before most of Europe’s fans actually got to see this kid. Most of the English players “farfarred” or “pooh-poohed” him. Can’t be any good!” They were prepared to put up with Pele because they just could not understand what he was doing while playing incredible football to beat them. Once we started hearing about this golden child Maradona and of course the Argentinians who’d won their first world cup without him {Menotti’s Lucky Blunder} during the glorious Argentina 1978, the next world cup was surely going to be his. Everybody saw the skills and still they “farfaared” it, he not special, he is not special.
But, eventually they got to see the real reality. Now that he has passed, you are hearing all of the plaudits and stories. Gary Lineker is now prepared to come out and say that he saw Diego
Maradona keeping some socks that he’d rolled up like a little ball aloft and how long he kept it up with his left foot, forever and ever. Of course they always knew, especially England whose attitude that their own relatively unskilled players could outplay Maradona any day. What made them hate him even more was to become known worldwide as the Hands of God. It robbed the young players of the opportunity to love and imitate a truly great player, whose skills, were they to be shown on television, without prejudice, would have done wonders for upcoming talented players of Europe. I do not know why Diego did that at that time. As he says, it might not be something that happens in England (which of course it does), but as far as where he comes from, if it happens, it happens; you do not make an excuse. If the goalie saw it or the referee saw it and it passed, it passed. But the English were prepared to slay this great football wizard and convince others to do so, because of that. I think it’s a case of their loss.
Even today, now that he has passed, they still, while throwing accolades at him, still carry on about The Hand of God. Yes the Hand of God did touch Diego Maradona, It’s true, because what he could do with a ball, no player around today could even contemplate it. There will always be the argument about Maradona versus Pele versus the real Renaldo (the Phenomino). But it really does not matter as Pele would tell you. You have a generation, you carry them with you, they learn from you, another one comes, they carry on.
Maradona’s children (not his real children) the children who have seen him play, they are the ones that are playing today, Lionel Messi, the Portuguese Ronaldo, all these guys have all seen the magic, and they’ve all tried to be Diego Maradona, for them Diego is God and quite rightly so.
My Interlude with Diego Maradona started in a very auspicious way. I had started my own Independent record company Ice Records. I started to make the records that most people know from that period of time. My youngest brother Alpine, who was working for the company, met at MIDEM (a music business convention) where music executives meet once a year in Cannes. He met and befriended an executive named Bernardo Bergeret who was Living in Argentina and through Alpine we would send my records to Bernardo who was working as the head of A&R (they decide which records to release) at ATC Records in Buenos Aires. He got one of the records entitled “My Love My Love” and included it on a compilation and the record proverbially blew up.
We made a general agreement for my catalogue for Argentina. I was getting these reports that the people were showing a liking to me.
One day I was told I should come to Argentina and that the people wanted to see me. I was selling A LOT of records in Argentina. In those days records really sold in vast numbers when they hit. I was checking to see if they had a lot of Black people in Argentina or like they do in Brazil and you would expect you will be selling a lot of records to these people, but I found out Argentina hardly has any Black People at all. Then I realized that these people must really love this music.
So we started to make plans to tour.
Arriving at Argentina, I realized it was a special place. Bernardo was telling me that all of the time but you don’t know it till you see it. Bernardo also told me that the places we would be playing would be up and down the country so that I would get a chance to see the real Argentina as well as the urban Argentina; places like Cordoba and obviously Buenos Aires and you will meet a great fan of yours, Diego Maradona. “Diego will be at your show.” Somewhere in the audience, when you play at Luna Park, which was the first gig, Diego Maradona will be in the audience. By now I’d known, well and truly, what Diego Maradona was about; the skills and his fame were at their peak and he was just about to leave Boca Juniors and had also signed some massive deal to wear Puma clothing. In fact his whole family I came to see wore Puma. Bernardo had told Maradona that I like to play soccer and he told the press. With that came an invitation to train with a club called Racing Club. I told Bernardo that I just have to go to see a football match in Buenos Aires.
After the excitement and the welcome into Argentina, we had the first gig at Luna Park. There was a fantastic audience and we filmed it. That is what you see on YouTube that is part of what took place and the whole show was broadcast LIVE to the public.
When I asked the audience if Diego Maradona was in the house, everyone was shouting “yes, yes he is here” but he was so far away, so when I invited him up on stage the crowd made it impossible, after a while I thought he was not going to make it to the stage. But thank God, because we became so close after that meeting. He came up on stage and was dancing and clapping, we had now made a connection.
He invited me and my entire retinue to his house. His Diego Armando Maradona football team was there and we were invited to play, our team against his team on a full size football pitch.
There are lots and lots of major league football stars that have never either played with or against or even seen Diego Maradona let alone see him play but I can honestly say I played against
Diego, when he was in his prime, not when he was big, when he was in his prime, when in order to catch him you would have to lasso him and I played with him and I am proud of that, because there are so many guys that are Professionals who would have loved to have had that opportunity. When we finished playing, we acquitted ourselves quite well, they did not swamp us with 10 – 0, we gave good account of ourselves, he came up with his manager at the time who was called Jorg’e and asked how come we played so well. I told him I have a brother, talking about Rudy, I was boasting about him saying the game would’ve been tied had he been with us.
Diego said if Rudy was as good as I said he would send for him and give him a trial for Boca Juniors.
The interface between his family and my family was wonderful. He then said “you must come to
Boca Juniors to train,” I thought nothing would please me more.
The next day Bernardo took us to the Boca Juniors training ground. The guys were playing in a mud bath, the ground was very rough as was the playing …very aggressive against each other.
They train how to play this way. Real serious training and Diego was chief amongst them. He had on a short, blue sweat jacket which he gave to me afterwards and I gave him my on stage leather jacket. He also presented me with some of his international shirts as well as two of his treasured Boca Juniors shirts that he’d worn in various matches. Yes, I have a collection of genuine shirts that he wore in his international and club matches.
I promised him that since I was so well-treated, well thought-of, my whole inside went towards Argentina and the people I met there. To have this close relationship with these people was amazing. I told him I would write a song for him, Claudia and Argentina. I don’t think he believed me. He must have been told all kinds of crap by people of all description at all kinds of times.
I did not see Boca Juniors play as I had left by then, but I did see them train.
Diego Maradona was all heart all football all commitment.
Even playing against amateurs like us, he was committed, if he had to beat you twice, he would beat you twice, that commitment I have never seen in any of the professionals in Europe. I had not even seen that in my hero in English football which was Jimmy Greaves, so many years before I’d seen Pele and Maradona. I had not seen it… A lot of the European guys did not have that commitment to train, to work hard, to play hard and that is what made Diego Maradona into the excessively brilliant ball player that he became. And this moment? It is like someone has ripped a part of my chest out. There’s nothing like total dedication when you love what you were born to do.
What is in my heart for Argentina, the people of the country, rich or poor, players, all the people I met? I want them to know how grateful I am for the period of time that they sought to make me one of their stars. Diego Maradona touched me and touched my family since we travelled as a family, Ice Records is a family affair. It is just now that the rest of the world are going to catch up with the real human being because now they will see before and after, they will see Diego before Europe and after Europe and there is a significant difference. We all have to die, dying is part of living. If you are going to die, then the fact that you have done your best work, at the best time, is the greatest vindication for anything that will happen thereafter. God bless Diego Maradona. He did the best work at the right time and today people are still scrambling to catch up.
Rest In Perfect Peace Diego Maradona.
Ringbang For Life.
Eddy Grant.

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