Marcela Mora y Araujo
Appearances
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
This is going to be difficult to prove, but there has been a preliminary hearings which has allowed the trial to start finally, which suggests there is enough evidence to at least claim manslaughter or negligence. on the part of the health professionals. So there's seven people on trial at the moment, and there's one nurse who's asked for a trial by jury.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
And they range from various levels of accusations. And the main accused are his physician, Dr. Luque, and his psychiatrist, Dr. Kosachov, who were really the decision makers in terms of medical care and administrating both the medication and sorting out the shifts. The accusation is that the conditions in the place where he was were not adequate for a house internment.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
They were not hospital conditions. The defences are saying he was not hospitalised at home. That's not what the situation was. He had been discharged. There is someone from the hospital saying they had recommended psychiatric or rehab institutionalization. But of course, that's very difficult to do against someone's will and an adult's will.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
And so the details of all those very sordid and private final days are going to be played out in this drawn out court hearings that are expected to carry on at least until July, because there are seven defendants, five accusers, each with their legal teams and hundreds of witnesses.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
So at the time of his death, Maradona was closely linked with an agent or a man who was representing his business interests called Matthias Morla. And after Maradona's death, Morla claimed he had been left the rights to all of Maradona's estate properties. The word Maradona, the word Diego, the number 10. And this is disputed by the children.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
Now, he's not directly involved in this lawsuit, but I think ultimately, and a lot of the lawyers are stating as much, the children's hope is to prove somehow that Morla... put together this medical team and was the ultimate responsible person.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
Morla is not involved at all at this stage because what the courts have allowed to go to trial is a forensic look at the actual expert professional medical care. And Morla was not a part of that. But the children very much hope that they can tie
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
the relationship between the various medical professionals to Morla and that this will be a stepping stone to sort of pave the way for more open litigation over the rights of the Maradona estate in as much as that is anything concrete.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
So there's incredible media attention on anything Maradona generally. There are journalists from all over the world accredited in the courthouse. It's been a few years since his death and there's been a lot of these sort of accusations and allegations played out in the media already. The tapes, the leaks, we know a lot about the characters involved.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
The fights and disputes with the time manager and his family have been really publicly voiced. And I think there hasn't yet been anything... truly revelatory from the courthouse. I think it's going to blow up slowly over the next few weeks or months.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
So this is among the few things that have really shaken people in these first early stages of the trial. One of the lawyers for the prosecution showed a photograph of Maradona incredibly bloated, just lying helpless. It's a shocking image. And he showed it in the courthouse and we could see his daughters weeping, people sighing and that. has actually gone viral already.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
It was shown under the premise, how could anybody who saw him like this not realise that he needed immediate, urgent help? You know, why didn't anyone call an ambulance immediately or do something differently so that he wouldn't be in this house where there was not even a band-aid, somebody said.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
So it's a kind of trademark thing, whenever Maradona is in any building or place, that there will be crowds chanting outside or surrounding, whether it's a car park, a hotel room or a restaurant. And the courthouse is proving no different. And people, football fans, ordinary people...
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
who'd been chanting justice for God, which is extraordinary, really, because it shows people still think of him as God, even in this sort of incredibly ungodly-like scenario in which his story is at the moment.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
I always like to be a little bit wary of drawing huge parallels between the general malaise in the country and football or Diego particularly, because it's a country that has often had massive crises and costs of living and so on. But I do think Maradona is the emblematic embodiment of the dream, of hope and of the ability to...
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
He was incredible. You could almost sense his presence somewhere. Even if you weren't right next to him, it was like the air changed around him. I first met him in the mid-90s. He was presenting a football players' union with all the bad boys of world football, Cantona and George Weah in Paris. They had decided to take on FIFA to complain about,
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
to reach heights and that symbolic importance he has is so at odds with the way he died that there is a true sadness and empathy even by people who don't support Maradona because he was a very divisive figure it's not like the whole of Argentina adore him a lot of Argentina had sort of had enough of him and this plays against Messi quite a lot over the years but
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
The way in which he died is particularly sad and shocking because of the sort of loneliness and the awfulness. So that sadness, I think, reaches people.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
I don't think Maradona's legacy will ever decline because I think not just the World Cup triumph in 86, which is so meaningful, but also because of the way, the character he was, the type of person he was, and the way that he was a contrarian. He was someone who thrived on conflict and needed conflict to kind of function.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
When Messi came along, this shy, reserved, quiet child who seemed to always be looking down. Maradona had his eyes would flash
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
fix upwards he was always like just staring straight ahead chest out Messi seemed to be physically the complete opposite Messi shone and was brilliant at club level in Europe but somehow never quite delivered for Argentina and this was like an albatross around his neck it was a real issue and this sort of demand that he be more Argentinian, that he be more assertive, that he be more Diego.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
And I think when Maradona died and Messi spontaneously took off his club shirt and had an Argentinian junior's shirt underneath and just sort of waved up at the sky, it was like a real coming out of his shell when Messi finally did manage to pick up a Argentina's third World Cup in 2022, there was a lot of talk about him finally filling in Diego's shoes or becoming more Diego.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
Personally, I think it's the opposite. Messi found a freedom, if you like, to be Messi and not have to be more like Diego, just be someone else. I don't think that will diminish Maradona's legacy at all. I think it just sort of enhances this notion that Argentinians have even from a long time before Maradona.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
the 50s and so on, when Di Stefano was considered the best player in the world, that Argentina is the best country in the world at football. They're all just like little ingredients to make this fantasy.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
the conditions under which players were made to play World Cups. He was in a five-star hotel and then he could sort of humming reggae songs. He said, let's go and get some pizza through a kind of back corridor. And then as we got to the front door, he just turned around to the small group of us and said, watch out, there's going to be a lot of people out here.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
And suddenly we kind of stepped forward through this gateway into a completely different reality where literally hundreds of people surrounded him, like, you know, flies on honey. And I think the comparison with flies has been made several times since. I've seen it in films and by other authors. And he was just disappeared in the middle of the crowd.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
And you could see in his face that he was quite panicked. He was with his then manager, a guy called Guillermo Coppola, who stopped a pink Rolls Royce that happened to be driving by, a sort of open-roofed Rolls Royce, and whispered something in the driver's ear. Maradona and him hopped on and drove away. And it was quite extraordinary. And that was my very first sort of proper encounter with him.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
I don't know about vindictive particularly, but he had an incredible memory. He remembered faces, people, and I don't think he forgave easily. You know, if he felt he'd been crossed by someone, he didn't forget it. He was incredibly generous as well. So a lot of his teammates, especially, and, you know, people close to him will give a...
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
lavish examples of his generosity you know by someone's father a car he organized charity games and so on but at the same time you know in that very same trip where i first met him he was due to play in bosnia in a charity match and and actually just overslept after a sort of
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
night of heavy partying and his entourage, because he always had an entourage, put a lot of pressure on the organisers of the charity game to book a charter private plane. He subsequently spent a lot of time in Cuba, a country which he said he loved. He had the Che Guevara's face tattooed on his leg. And at the same time,
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
In Cuba, he enjoyed a very privileged life that wasn't at all like most Cubans enjoy. He had access to the best foods. He had a direct satellite link to all the best football in the world. I often think that very contradictory nature is what made him so appealing. It was like the most human of traits, so everybody could identify with it. And he was acutely aware of his contradictions and often...
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
highlighted them. So in his plight to defend the marginal, the oppressed, the people without a voice, he often said, I'm not an example. Do not turn to me. I can't solve anything. He visited the Vatican and said, you know, the Catholic Church is always going on about poverty. And I just looked up at the ceiling and said to the Pope,
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
sell the ceiling mate sell the ceiling it's made of gold so in a way there's no hypocrisy there and I think that made him incredibly appealing to a lot of people a lot of very different people from all parts of the world and his football genius I mean I know you said it's indivisible his his football genius for football lovers is something that you can't suspect you know you can't eliminate it
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
His skills and his brilliance were on TV even when he was a child, a tiny child. He would do kipi-yapi at halftime and before games at his club. And there's a very famous clip of him from those days saying his dream is to win the World Cup.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
He then moved to Boca Juniors, where he became the player that represented all the values of the Boca Juniors club, and then moved to Barcelona in 1981 in a $6 million transfer deal. I remember... Well, because I was a child at the time and there was a TV series, an American TV series of a nuclear man whose sort of nuclear powered limbs had cost six million dollars.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
It was called the Six Million Dollar Man. And we we used to boast that Argentina had its own six million dollar man. In Barcelona, he did incredibly well, but also started running into trouble with authorities, perhaps also started getting into trouble with his substance abuse, specifically cocaine.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
And then he moved from Barcelona to Naples in what was widely regarded as a shocking move because Naples was
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
a poor forgotten club in the south of Italy and the super clubs were in Italy at that time, the big clubs, but he felt that this is where he would be able to make a difference and had an incredible sense of loyalty and this struggle of the oppressed that he brought to Naples where he is still to this day considered one of the most emblematic and important, not just players of the club, but
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
People of Naples. The pinnacle of his international fame really reached its height when he finally achieved that dream that he'd mentioned as a little boy on TV of winning the World Cup for Argentina in 1986. And as Menotti, who was one of his first managers in Argentina, liked to say that 1986 World Cup, there was a sort of elite of football royalty. There were a lot of big names.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
But among those princes, there was only one king. Maradona stood up above the rest.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
So I think Diego Maradona was a very divisive character and represented a lot of different things to different people. Firstly, he represented the second World Cup win in 1986, which is hugely important because the 1978 World Cup was won under quite difficult social conditions with a military dictatorship in place.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
He also represented to people around the world, not just Argentina, the rags to riches, the hope, the fact that you can be born in incredibly limiting, unhappy circumstances, in poverty, and yet become the absolute and arguable best at something.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
Yes, he did everything in excess. He was a man of no moderation. You know, he'd have five bottles of champagne, he'd eat three steaks, he'd order 15 pizzas. Alcohol and cocaine were a problem as a sort of young adult, which are perhaps not surprisingly, the substances that abound in South America, sort of elite circles and in football.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
And then in later life, it was perhaps more prescribed medications. This sort of extreme behavior came hand in hand with a lot of fun loving partying. You know, he was friends with rock stars. I went to a birthday of his in 2005 and it was live beamed on TV. So he lived in the public eye always right to his very last days. Everything was documented. Everything was filmed.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
Everything was broadcast live. The most intimate details of his life would either leak or be played out on TV channels. So it was really a kind of impossible life to inhabit, the one that, on the one hand, he created for himself, and on the other, we as a society provided for him. I think there's a sports psychologist in Argentina called Marcelo Rofe, who says we are addicted to Maradona.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
We as a society have over-consumed him. And I think that's a very interesting thought.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
It was an extraordinary moment. It was very sudden. People just started flocking to the streets and marching towards the centre of the city. There's a monument called the Obelisk, which is traditionally where football fans go to celebrate football triumphs. The president at the time said he'd offered the presidential palace, the pink house, as it's known, for the coffin to be displayed.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
And suddenly it was the first true massive outing throughout the whole of 2020 because of lockdown. And football had been suspended as well. So there was an incredible sense of the terraces. It was like the return to match day. There were people with scarves, there were songs being chanted, and it was incredibly moving.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
A massive, massive flocking of crowds towards the coffin until it all went sort of slightly Maradonian. mayhemmy and there was some confusion as to which way the crowds would go, how long the coffin would be there for, where it would go to be buried, the police, literally like when it goes off at a football match.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
This didn't last very long and eventually the coffin drove throughout the whole city and there was just silent people all along the motorways and standing on the sides of the streets, weeping. It was literally incredibly moving. I remember my mother watching on the news and saying, this is just the most beautiful, spontaneous manifestation of popular support.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
And finally, he was buried in a cemetery under the last ray of sun of the day in a very, very small, intimate moment just with his immediate family and friends. So it was quite a remarkable moment and I don't think anyone who was here would forget it. The sadness, the joy, the euphoria, the mayhem, the respectful silence. It was an incredible, incredible moment.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Maradona and the trial transfixing Argentina
So the lawsuit is being brought about by his five children. against the medical team that was in charge of looking after him in the few days between his discharge from hospital and his death in the private villa. They're hoping to prove that there was a concerted and somehow orchestrated plan to allow Maradona to die.