015 Cocaine Soccer God Transcript (Diego Maradona)

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Michael: This person died in 2020 at age 16, he was described as brazen and shameless.

Friend: Uh, Burt Reynolds,

Michael: not Burt Reynolds, his ability to surprise and startle developed a darker edge as he became addicted to cocaine.

Friend: Yeah, cocaine. Um, Chris Farley,

Michael: not Chris Farley. His thick musculature bloated into unhealthy corpulence. He was hospitalized in April, 2004, with what doctors described as a weakened heart and acute breathing problems.

Friend: I mean, prince wasn't the hick wasn't like bill Paxton,

Michael: not bill Paxton.

Friend: I mean, these all Foundling Burt Reynolds, it's not thick mustache. And I was like,

Michael: I got God in 2000. FIFA soccer's governing body voted him and Palae of Brazil, the sports two greatest players,

Friend: Diego Mira, Donna God, Diego Maradona.

Michael: Today's celebrity is Diego Maradona.

welcome to famous. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: My name is amit Kapoor .

Michael: And on this show, we go through a series of categories about multiple aspects of a famous person's life. We want to find out the things that we would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question. What I want that life today, Diego Maradona died 2020 age, 60 category one grading, the first line of their obituary.

Diego Meredith. The Argentine who became a national hero as one of soccer's greatest players performing with a roguish cunning and extravagant control while pursuing a personal life rife with drug and alcohol abuse and health problems died on Wednesday in Tega Argentina, in Buenos Aires province. A wow.

I think they captured a lot of it. If not all

of it. Yeah. I actually have no idea what holes to poke. I'll tell you what leaped out to me, whether or not to mention the drug and alcohol abuse in the first line of his obituary, it's such a big part of their story, but there's like a lot of famous people who die who have addiction issues.

Where that's not mentioned in the first line of

Amit: their athletic demagogues who die of body aching, substance abuse, and the fact that it compromised his entire career in life, but on the obituary, what I picked up on is these words of contrasts like hero and rogue or genius and cunning,

Michael: extravagant control, I think is a great phrase.

Interesting. Dude. I don't know what the whole is. Is this, do I give this a 10 out of 10? I'm kind of leaning that way. I don't see what's wrong with this first line of the obituary. Like I do. I think it is missing his incredibly humble background from the sums of Buenos RAs and extreme poverty to. One of the greatest athletes in this sport of all time.

It's not the

Amit: greatest. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's just picking and choosing, there is so much to this story, but you're right. That is missing is whether it's even possible to fill that in. It feels

Michael: important to me because to your point about contrasts, I do think you have to know that about him, understand his folk hero quality.

I actually think that's a little bit of an omission for me. The more I think about it, perhaps

Amit: if it's a space issue. But yeah, I'm pretty damn good. Well, all right. What are you giving it? A, I'm going to go into new territory, Michael Osborne. I'm going to give it a 10. Wow. I am perfect as possible. Well, I'm starting to believe that a near perfect or very good enough is worthy of a 10.

Michael: I'm giving it a nine and I'm giving it a nine because I want the humble background in there. It is such an important part of his story for me.

Amit: Okay. 10 and a nine.

Michael: All right. Category two, five things. I love about you here. I'm at, and I work together to come up with five reasons why we are talking about this person in the first place.

I want you to start. What do you have? First thing you want to nominate?

Amit: Firstly, I put his dedicated. His talents are what everyone knows. But one part of that was his dedication to the game. And on the field and example, I pulled, it was in the 1986 world cup in which they ultimately won. He played every minute of every game.

So

Michael: his dedication synonymous with a work ethic to you. Are you putting

Amit: those in this situation? I'm making them somewhat synonymous. I think by definition they are different, but here I'm kind of using it as an overlap. I think every minute of every game he's all in, he is all in and that is so taxing on any human

Michael: form.

Well, and one thing I didn't know, because I don't understand soccer that well, I think it has gotten less brutal. In recent years when he was at his peak in the eighties, I think it was a slightly more violent game. Everything I found in my research showed that he got the shit beat out of him. He was attacked by other players in violent ways.

And as much as you can get away with that shit on the field. So to your point about dedication and playing, I mean, he's playing in a particular. You know, brutal period

Amit: of soccer's history. Okay. I think with a target on his back all the time.

Cause

Michael: he's the man. Yep. All right. I do want to ask about this, but what is your relationship with

Amit: soccer?

I do watch the world cup every four years, as much as I can. I don't follow much in between, on the scale of how grand a soccer fan can be globally. I am far on the other end of that scale. But I'm familiar enough with it to understand which countries are good, who some of the key players are. And then it stops about

Michael: there professional soccer players.

Do you think you could name, and I'm not going to ask you to do it, but like off the top of your head 20. Yeah. So that's twice as many as me probably. I think I would struggle to come up with eight. And what's funny is that some of my closest friends are avid soccer fans. So I've kind of like caught in the tailwinds of some of their passion for it.

But I did not realize nearly how important Diego Meredith. Is as a player and soccer's history until getting ready for this episode. Really? Yeah. I didn't realize that his name was mentioned in the same breath as Palae. I mean, this is magic Johnson to Michael Jordan or Mike Tyson to Muhammad Ali or whatever, like it's in that same.

Mount Rushmore of greatest of all time. Yeah, we're

Amit: too. We're here. We are like two, not very well-versed Americans. I kind to speak of one of the greatest of all time.

Michael: I was somehow on more comfortable territory when we were talking about Shirley temple. Yeah. Uh, should I go number two? Okay. I'm going to skip to something that is not top of my list, but I think it's actually the most important thing for me, a really interesting and eventful life.

There's nothing boring about this guy. There is nothing about him that is like on the sidelines or took a job. He didn't want. There is no moment in his entire 60 year existence that isn't supercharged. Every moment of his existence was interesting. And the

Amit: literally it started at like age three when they started to recognize his talent.

Totally.

Michael: That, that I had to really think about that because the word interesting is usually when people use it, they mean the opposite. Oh, that's interesting. Usually that means that's boring, but I couldn't come up with a better word to summarize all the events and all the experiences of his life hold.

And I love that because my great fear is that my life is going to be boring. I can understand

Amit: that, but like, it can be fascinating and interesting, but it can also burn you to the ground as I think we're going to talk about a lot, so constantly interesting. Yes. Fascinating desirable. I

Michael: don't think so.

Okay. Since you brought this up, this is something that's really been at the top of my mind about this episode. You go back to that obituary, right? It calls out his drug and alcohol abuse from the get-go. So we're not that far into this conversation. We know he died at 60. We haven't gotten over under yet, but that's pretty young.

We know he had a life rife with drug and alcohol and abuse problem. And w we also know that he was famous and you and I have kind of agreed that fame on its face. Doesn't look all that desirable. Well, it's on a continuum. Sure. But you and I have this thing before we decide on who we're going to do, it's got to cross the 30% threshold.

You want to explain what the.

Amit: Yeah, there needs to be at least a 30% chance that we say yes to the van. That's right.

Michael: So I just want to acknowledge from the outset that we're going to have to make a hard case here because you put those things together, died, young drug and alcohol abuse and was famous in a way that it was surrounded by the paparazzi.

For most of his life. We've got to find some things that, you know, add up to greater than that. 30% for me. This is the best thing I have to start off with. This is an incredible journey for an individual to have. I just wanted to call all of this out because I do think it needs to be acknowledged up top that in some ways, I guess, to the van or bake is an uphill battle.

So I'll be curious to see how strong the case we can make is as we go through. Yeah. I'm pretty confident. Well, with that, uh, thing you love number three.

Amit: His wedding in 1989, was this huge affair in Argentina. What I loved about it though, is he flew over 200 teammates and ex teammates to the wedding. And I think that is fantastic.

I think about like a wedding that I have to go to later this year and it's in another country, you know, but a lot of people are, have reasons that they can't go, but yeah. You are able to just say here's a ticket, you're coming, that's living. Okay. So

Michael: I didn't understand that totally. At first, what you like is the gesture?

Yes, absolutely. Like everybody needs to show up for this. It's going to be a big bad-ass party and it's a party like

Amit: it's 1989. Yeah. But it's also like, I need you there. No excuses just send your passport number to this person and you're coming.

Michael: What's the best party you've ever thrown.

Amit: The best party I've ever thrown.

I would probably say either my 30th or my 40th birthday party, the 30th in terms of volume, there was just a lot of people there. Everyone was wearing the exact same t-shirt it was a lot of fun. This is the one

Michael: you did a taco cabana.

Amit: No, that was my 20. 4 30, 20 fish. That's up there too. I've had a lot of really good birthday

Michael: parties.

You throw a good party, man. Thank you. Is something that

Amit: you attended my 35th, of course. So going back to the mayor, Donna, I would certainly fantasize about having that ability

Michael: yeah. To do it. Yeah, that's cool. That's a good one. I like it. Best party I ever threw was my wedding. And I don't think I can top it.

Amit: You had a band there, like a well-known

Michael: boards, man. I had the gore that is big of gin and juice fame.

that was my wedding gift for my parents. That is awesome. It was a good one. It was a good one. All right. You want me to take number four? Yep. Sure, sure.

Amit: I think I got to go with

Michael: passion.

Amit: The guy. Passionate

Michael: through and through like, he wore his emotions on his sleeve and you could see it in his face. You could see it and his expressions and his whole body.

I admire people who have that kind of passion. And I think it's perhaps his defining quality.

Amit: Like you can see on some of these videos when he like lines up for national Anthem and he's being booed, it's like, he's getting visibly angry and he's like mouthing those motherfuckers when they do it. And you look at the story.

A lot of what we'll probably talk about was his time in Naples, right before that he played for a club in Barcelona. Barcelona. Yeah. Um, no, no.

Michael: Um, John Oliver bit where he talks about how annoying it is when people come back from Spain and call it Barcelona, you all the worst. I did

Amit: see that, uh, he was ultimately like left back club or they.

Sold him was the phrase that they use. Right. And that was largely in part of this massive Malay that he was involved in. in front of a hundred thousand people. But what happened is somebody on the opposing team was taunting him as he always gets taunted because he's so good. But the person crossed the line by saying something about his father and used some slur about.

His father's indigenous background in south America and he's like, okay, it's good time. I'm going to beat the shit out of you. But what we're talking about here is passionate and

Michael: expression. Yeah. Well, and it's a leadership. I think that's part of the reason I admire it. I asked a friend of mine before you mentioned, you know, he's good.

And we've talked about his greatness. I asked a friend of mine who understands soccer very well to break down his goodness for me a little bit. What he said is like, all right. Think of it in four ways. There's technically tactically, physically and mentally. So technically like what are his actual skills and ability his ability to control the ball has a relationship with the ball.

Just pure fundamental skills. Tactically ability to think and make decisions and make on the fly decisions. I want you, I want to talk about that more in a second, physically his body, and then mentally the sort of psychology couldn't imagine the pressure of it. I asked him to dig deeper on the physically thing cause he is a short

Amit: guy.

Right. Mayor Donna. Yeah.

Michael: Right. And I was like, wouldn't all other things have been better if he were, you know, six, two. And he's like, yes. But when you package all these things up together, I'm not so sure. The low center of gravity, I read that a lot. Did you? Yeah. So in some ways he's like, if you are designing the perfect soccer player, you might futz with that variable, but everything else is a tenant.

Amit: Yeah, but they say that shortness, that low center of gravity combined with the ball control skills and the range was what made him such an outlier. Yeah. Five, five in an, in any team sport you wouldn't expect excellence, excellence. You wouldn't expect

Michael: excellence. All right. Uh, you want to take five? Yeah, I've

Amit: got a lot.

What I tried to do is see the ones that aren't going to come up later. And the one I went with is ice cream. So in the 2010 world cup, a lot of these teams, especially those like kind of prima donna types have extraordinary requests for their accommodations. It goes back to that whole, like M&M's in the dressing room type of thing.

Michael: Yeah this is the rolling stones would write like a rider or something in their contracts saying we went only green m&M's

Amit: Exactly

Michael: and it was like a test to see if. you read the Contract,

right?

Amit: Yeah. So, um, I don't think this was a test. This was actually demands.

Michael: Okay.

Amit: So Argentina is one of those teams because Maradona was the coach at that world cup.

Sorry, what year are we talking? About 2010, the south African. He was a coach as long after his retirement. So of all of his outlandish requests, most of which were met was for the team to have 24 hour access to ice cream. And I think that meant himself having 24 hour access to ice cream. There's a lot to say about that's indulgent, especially if we're talking about somebody that is an addict.

However, what I like about it is the way it speaks to the inner child, just that that's one of the requests, you know, there was a lot of inner child possibly lost or trying to be. Grasped throughout Maradona's life and decline, but I like excluding the excess of it. I like the ice cream request for what it speaks to the inner child.

Michael: I love that one. I love that.

I've thought about if I were ever on death row, what my final thing would be my final meal. I'd probably love to have two gallons of ice cream. I really don't. I've I've really thought about this. Would it be barbecue? Would it be a hamburger? Would it be, uh, you know, enchiladas?

I actually think if I'm about to face the, the chair, I think I just want as much ice cream as I could possibly eat. Fucking love ice cream. Wow. I love that you chose that for number five. That's really good. Okay. And I'm going to probably get some money. You've created a craving, so, all right. So, uh, all right, so let's recap.

So we said dedication, an interesting life and eventful life. You said,

Amit: I said flying teammates to the

Michael: wedding, flying teammates to the wedding. I said passion. And we talked a little bit about how that blends in with his greatness and ice cream. Yep. Perfect. Category three Malcovich Malcolm. This category is named after the movie being John Malcovich in which characters in the movie can take this little kind of slide into John Malcovich his brain and have a front row seat to his experiences.

Aman, what's your Malcovich Malcovich

Amit: moment. There were a lot to choose from. I kind of like vacillated between both the Goodman. Uh, I ultimately landed with a good one. And it was when he was introduced to the city of Naples after this Barcelona thing, he went to play for Naples, Italy, and after sort of the contract was finalized and he arrived.

They did this welcome reception for him at the stadium where something like 85,000 people were present. And this was not for a game. This was not for a concert. This is just for Diego Maradona. To walk out on the field and he like dribbled for a few minutes. Yeah. And they are chanting his name and 85,000 people to your w

Michael: title.

Amit: That's essentially what it was and my God to see that crowd from those eyes who are there for no other reason than to celebrate your

Michael: arrival, your potential, like the thing that hasn't even happened yet.

Amit: Yes. Yeah. God, you want that? Do I actually want it, do I want that much attention and therefore that much kind of stress that will follow it.

Absolutely not. Yeah, but I wouldn't mind walking out of the studio right now and just have 85,000 people clapping for me. And then I go to my car and they forget who I am. Let me

Michael: send a quick text message to see if I can. Okay.

Amit: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of validation in that moment, right? If you ever worry about anonymity in your life, and I don't think Diego Maradona ever did.

I don't want all the weight that goes with that, but to have a quick, and what we're talking about is a Malcovich portal, right? So you're in the front row seat for just a little

Michael: while. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, the embracing of what you could be of your future potential, if you believe that you are destined for greatness, which I think he must have.

And to have fans express that

Amit: it's acknowledgement that you exist. Right? Like, I think so much of, of awards. When you think about the Oscars and stuff like that, a lot of it is recognition for your work, but so much of all the awards, it's also just acknowledgement the same, my existence and my creation is, is valid, but I can't

Michael: think of another analogy outside of sports where you're being celebrated for something that hasn't happened yet for the

Amit: potential presidential inauguration.

That's fair.

Michael: I don't even if though, that's a good ceremony for society. To have and to be doing that, maybe it is. It seems like if we are here to say, we believe in what we think you can do for us, whatever that may be, then I think that's probably a good message to communicate to that individual. But it seems like that's actually a message.

That's more directed at the crowd. What we're really saying is how much we need this.

Amit: Yeah. And we'll, and, and, uh, here's, here's a massive weight we're going to place on you for this

Michael: next decade of your life. How desperate we are to set the context for this. Naples did not have a good soccer team at the time.

And I was pretty ignorant before this episode about some of the north south divisions in Italy. Naples was a target of a lot of prejudice within

Amit: Italy. Yeah. It was. It's like hick country to them. Yeah. I want to say one more thing about that. So my friends and I, we have a little tradition sometimes when we gather that if we're at a bar or someone's house, If we arrive at interval times, uh, we have a phrase that we say called clap.

'em in. So basically if we see our friend walked through the door and then we'll just applaud, we'll just clap him in until he comes and sits at our table of five. And that's just a micro version of this. I just think the acknowledgement of existence on a grand scale, clap them in. I

Michael: like that. I'm going to steal that.

Amit: All right. Malcovich.

Michael: I went captain obvious here. Cause I feel like this is a good place to talk about it. The handball in 1986, the hand of God, the hand of God in 1986 is the quarter finals game, Argentina versus England in the 1986 world cup. This is like one of the most famous moments in his entire professional life, certainly in the international life.

And. The famous moments, world cup soccer. And even if it's in the quarter finals,

Amit: every listener would benefit from YouTube it right now,

Michael: that's right. But basically what happens is he goes up to of the ball, into the goal and he actually hits it with his hand. And it's a very obvious handball, but the referee didn't see it.

And it goes in, gets ruled a goal. Argentina goes up one, nothing against him. The second, most important thing is four minutes later when he slashes through all the English defenders and scores, just one of the most incredible goals. And that play is unbelievable. So that one I like seeing, but the handball itself, that's my Malcolm X and Y the way it's a split second decision.

Right? So there's all this lore around this moment, because this is four years after the Falklands war between Argentina and the UK. There's all this shame in Argentina about how thoroughly defeated they were by the English. And the story later is like this soccer matches almost revenge on the Falklands war.

Right. That's how important soccer is to do these fan bases as he's going up for. Paul, he must have known that his five, five stature isn't quite enough to get his head there. And he makes this decision to fling it with his hand. It's the split second decision of that moment, you know, you don't have any time to think.

Am I going to get away with this? You've got to assume it's probably going to be ruled a foul cause it's against the rules, but then in the microseconds, after you hear them yell goal and their celebration. So I guess,

Amit: and we're not in an instant replay culture and we're not in an instant

Michael: replay culture.

So I, I just want to know what's happening in those seconds. That surround that moment. Cause it, what it looks like to me is that he's going for a header, but he can't quite get there. Right. Um, and so he decided. To punch it and then he gets away with it and he knows this has enormous consequences because now all of a sudden they're leading in the game.

Yeah. I want to know what's going through his

Amit: and I'm, I'm not sure he knew there was probably a lot going in, but that's exactly, it's like, if you could just slow down those microseconds into understanding every thought, cause there is a calculation that's going on of, do I do this? Do I let this bounce off my chest?

What do I do? And so what you want to see is like all the weighting of everything that's happening in that split second. Well,

Michael: and you know, this is something that to this day remains a heated sports moment that people argue about and discuss the stories we tell about what its significant. I have almost no relationship to the actual incident itself.

So there's a part of me that just wants to know the truth of what was in his mind when he's like, fuck it. I'm hitting him with.

Amit: Yeah. And this is also when a lot of the world started to split on marijuana. Like this is like the, they call it the cheat. Yeah. And you gotta wonder in those decisions. I mean, on the one hand, you wonder if the devil inside of him is like, I will do it.

To win. But on the other hand, it's also the phrase he used to describe it is that goal was with the head of Maradona and a little bit of a hand of God. And I mean, I don't even think

Michael: he knows, I don't even think he knew what was going on in his mind, but I

Amit: wonder, so do you have a hypothesis with the background of the Falklands war and all of that?

That maybe this is just like, this is a little bit of earned a justice, right? That I might punch this ball in. It might go in. I might get away with this. This is

Michael: deserved. I don't know. And I wouldn't pretend to know. What I do think is that he was a man that from a very early age, you mentioned inner child and litter.

I think he must've felt like a man with a destiny. I think if you believe that you have a destiny in life, You also begin to believe in a sort of immortality, the rules don't apply at some point. That's the psychology that was underlying that split second decision. Yeah.

Amit: Well, it's my belief in an immortality, but you also believe in a duty, right?

That you are so important to this team and to this country that you're representing, that you have to get the

Michael: ball in. Yeah. That's my Malcovich moment. Yeah. That millisecond

Amit: is probably worth

Michael: about a million words. Yeah. Well, luckily we have the internet for that category for love and marriage. How many marriages also, how many children and is there anything public about these relationships?

Got it all here. I'll go through. Okay. One marriage to Claudia in 1989. They'd actually been together for a number of years. Prior to that, Diego was 29. She was 27. They were divorced in 2003 or four, actually heard different accounts about the actual year. So he's about 44. She's about 42. They had two daughters as part of that marriage.

So that's the only marriage. The kid's story gets a lot more complicated. Well, the marriage

Amit: story we need to get into also, that's complicated given the kid's story you

Michael: do. So which one, which direction should I explain the, uh, it's hard to know exactly how many total there were up to eight, maybe more including the two with cloudy.

So six more. There's. Absolutely. Boy that he's the father of and was determined in a paternity suit with an Italian woman during this time in Naples. There's also another child named Jonah, also born out of wedlock. Diego, Fernando was born to his ex-girlfriend in 2013. There were no paternity issues.

There was just a child born outside of the marriage. And I wrote this down. The Argentine legends did acknowledge paternity of three Cuban children because he was in Cuba in the early two thousands for

Amit: three years under, basically under the care of Fidel

Michael: Castro. Yeah. They'd become buddies. In fact, Fidel was one of the most important people.

He dedicated his autobiography. I read it. It's hard to get through it. Like, it's just a lot of soccer in there. Um, so I had to go to other places to get information. Anyway, let's see. So the Cuban children were reportedly born to two different mothers. During that time, two more people have claimed to be the children of Diego Maradona in recent years.

And there may be more so he's fathering a lot of children

Amit: and not, I think even to the day he died, he didn't acknowledge all of them. I think the, the first one of, from the Italian. He eventually did. It was

Michael: a soccer player himself.

Amit: Yes. Yeah. There wasn't a lot of like public claims for paternity. Right.

Michael: It's hard to track. There may be more and I don't know something I discovered in trying to learn about some of this stuff is, first of all, my Spanish is not all that. Great. So some of these. Newspaper clippings haven't been translated. So it's a little bit harder to get information on. So what, what, what to be said about all

Amit: well, we, you know, we go back to Claudia.

Yeah, I think so because of the north star of the show is desirability and what's good. So he was in a long-term relationship that culminated in marriage. He met

Michael: this woman at a very young age when he was a child, but

Amit: he was clearly not monogamous none of these affairs. Like everyone knew about them. It was part of the.

Persona that was Maradona, especially living in Italy during those years. And maybe even in Spain, before that he was seen with women, it was, well,

Michael: no, I mean, his time in Naples came to a conclusion with a prostitution ring getting busted, and I didn't completely understand his role in that other than he was caught up in.

And he was also tied up with a mob at that point. Yes. Okay. So what

Amit: I want to know is the marriage. Yeah. You know, you are not committed, monogamous. No, it's not a monogamous marriage, at least on one side. I don't know anything about Claudia's life. I didn't look into it. I guess I want to know is why. And maybe this is just from her perspective.

Michael: I mean, I don't think I have to think that hard about it. I think what defines his life is a kind of search for anything that resembles stability. The fact that they knew each other, basically as kids, I think matters. I think she's an anchor of a source of his roots and where he came from. And as a reminder of those years, that life was like, before you became a soccer.

Great. Which basically happens around age 15 or 16. And he's an adolescent. He's not a man

Amit: yet, but what does that say? Like for her, let's say just from her perspective. She's in this long-term relationship. She's the mother of his two children. They eventually get married, but she's very aware of his lifestyle.

So why does she do it?

Michael: I don't know. I have to assume the power dynamics are such that they both come from extreme poverty and he's pulling in an incredible sound. Did this does not seem all that uncommon to me that there are people who come from humble backgrounds who encounter wealth, and that creates an unbelievable amount of room for forgiveness of otherwise unforgivable behavior.

So I just have to assume that there's not even the perception of choice for. Why would he want it? I think it's

Amit: clear why he would want it because he gets, he gets everything. He gets the home life. Andy gets everything, but does this make him bad?

Michael: That's a bigger nastier question. And the reason it's a bigger nastier question, I think has to do somewhat with how you understand addiction as a disease.

And he's an alcoholic and he's a drunk. To your question. Was he a bad person? I think he's a sick person first. That's how I understand the disease of addiction. What is that

Amit: when you are knowingly and publicly entering into affairs? Uh,

Michael: I think if you are an addict or an alcoholic, especially of the variety that Diego Maradona was, there is no limit to the damage you cause in your relationships.

I

Amit: still want to know whether you think. He's a bad guy. Then this specifically around the nature of, of love and romance in his life.

Michael: Uh, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to weigh in on anybody's marriage. I wouldn't call him a bad guy, but I called him a sick guy first. I, I, I guess I don't know how to get any closer to your question.

Amit: Well, it's just, it's hard. It's tough to wrap my head around that there is a version of marriage or a style of marriage that exists. One spouse knows that the. Is a philanderer and it doesn't rock the marriage because

Michael: I, okay. I think that we probably, from the outside, looking in it's very easy to make too much of infidelity.

My hunch is that there were also probably moments of deep expression of love and gratitude. Between the two of them, I don't know, but it certainly looks that way. He certainly says that over and over in his autobiography, like I think he loved her. And I think he would, at times was able to communicate that.

And at times he's caught up in his addiction and I'm lumping his infidelity and problematic behavior as part of a consequence of his addiction. Because I think you, you get drunk, you get fucked up on blow and you rationalize all kinds of behavior that is harmful to other people, including your spouse.

But I also think that it's not like he was just a Prechter and fucking around. It doesn't seem that way. Probably not, but who the hell knows, like what this all boils down to me is given the umbrella of addiction in his life. I don't even know how closely to even bother looking at the mirror. 'cause I feel like you're trying to examine downstream issues when there's this like fucking elephant in the room.

Yeah.

Amit: It's just, it's, you know, the culture is that marriage is between two people. It's monogamous in a lifestyle like this. And I think in certain other modern lifestyles, that's not the definition necessarily. And that definition is going to continue to evolve probably through

Michael: our lifetime. Well, and maybe, I don't know if I talked about anything useful at all in my ramblings there.

I think the thing that matters. What are the expressions of love? Are they understood as expressions of love between the two people? And are they more or less reciprocal? I think it's fine to have a polyamorous relationship or understanding between two married people. However, my assumption is it's only going to be healthy.

If you're also able to say, this is how I need love from you and what do you need from me? And that people meet those new. I

Amit: think we will. And as far as in the dominant form of marriage and commitment, but I think this other segment is, is going to grow.

Michael: Yeah, probably. Yeah. All right. Let's move on.

Category five net worth.

Amit: Uh, it's interesting. It's um, I mean, it's, it seems like it was a wave, right? But I think the reports that I saw is that at, at death, it was somewhere between like a hundred and $500,000.

Michael: So I saw somewhere between a hundred thousand dollars and 75.

Amit: It depends if you count my abilities in taxes.

Yeah.

Michael: Like he was he, so he made a whole bunch of money in Italy and the Italian government was after him for a long time. And one estimate was that over the course of his lifetime, he made $500 million. And somewhere in the hundreds of thousands range is where it all lands. Yeah. Which is the

Amit: arc. Right.

So essentially as a footballer. After the early nineties, he was no longer and then had this kind of absence for awhile and returned to coaching for Argentina and all, but then eventually his coaching career landed, I think in the middle east, he was coaching teams in the Emirates, which is not that lucrative.

And I think all the endorsements had been long gone after his

Michael: public struggles. So he made a lot of money and he lost a lot of them. And I think to this. Some of the inheritance disputes are still being

Amit: sorted out. Yeah. Yeah. So the money just seems to the arc of his career as an on the field athlete.

Michael: Uh, I'm not sure there's a whole lot more to say about it.

Amit: Yeah. Is there anything to gleam

Michael: from it? Think so. I am glad for him that he was able to provide for his family. However messy that process was. Yeah, I think it speaks to the point you put out at the top of the show about extremes that's well captured in the obituary. Yeah. Category six, Simpsons, SNL, or hall of fame.

This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons as well as impersonations. Uh, I've got this lined up. Do you want me to I'm very interested. Yeah. The Simpsons, he hated it, hated it so much that there was actually a public dispute in 2006, between him and the man who did the Homer voice for the Argentine translation of this substance, because the substance is really popular internationally.

That's always been interesting. And what was his reason for

Amit: hating it? I

Michael: think he hated America. I think he hated all things America and he was pretty public about that. I mean, he's buzzed with Fidel Castro and I think there was a just anti-imperialist attitude. Okay. So that's the sentence you never appeared, but it did get into this public battle.

A Saturday night live. I saw nothing.

Amit: Yeah, I wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have been surprised that there was an 86 world cup.

Michael: Yeah. But I, there may be that I didn't find this. Actually. I have to say this exposed for me a weakness of our criteria for how famous a person is. I didn't realize quite what an American bias we were putting.

By choosing the Simpsons and Saturday night live well, it seemed

Amit: to have worked for our, our British gas. It seemed to work for Nelson Mandela somewhat.

Michael: I see what I mean, like his international fame is a plus bus Lister and everybody knows this guy

Amit: abroad, but the hall of fame were interesting. I mean, ultimately the FIFA tied him with Palae of the best soccer player of the century

Michael: and then the soccer players.

Some would make the case that he's number one, that he's better than the pin.

Amit: I

Michael: think there's a house divided, but I do think that Palae for whatever reason has more fame and notoriety and transcendent fame than. Yeah. People who don't know soccer, know the name Palae and they may not know marathon.

Amit: I was raised on Palae knowing like, that's the one word synonym with the game of soccer.

And then that goal that you talked about in 1986, not the hand goal, but the other one that followed, that has made all sorts of lists of like the top 10 sports feats of all time. Yeah, I mean, widely, widely recognized. And the guy is also, I mean, he's got stadiums named after him, even despite like how it all ended in Italy, they named the stadium after him, even despite this controversy around the 86 hand of God, there is a statue of Maradona in front of that stadium in Mexico city.

I mean, when he died in Argentina in November, 2020, they declared like three days of mourning.

Michael: Yeah. I think it is hard for. An American audience that doesn't follow soccer to appreciate his God-like qualities. All right. Category seven. Over, under, in this category, we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year.

They were born to see if they beat the house odds and as a measure of grace. So, uh, the life expectancy for an Argentina male born in 1960 was 65.06 years. He died at age 60. So under by about five. Yeah, not tremendously. That was actually my reaction. I was like, not way under, I thought it was going to be more under for an

Amit: athlete.

It's low, right? His weight vacillated so much in his peak, he was 150 pounds. And that at other times he went up to 300

Michael: pounds. He had gastro bypass surgery.

Amit: Yeah. But 60 is I just 60 is young. Would you call this.

Michael: I don't know that the death age is necessarily any more tragic than anything else that's tragic.

And I don't feel like he was robbed of more life. Exactly. I guess anybody dies at 60 and I, I'm sad about that. That's a young age and without any other information, you'd say they die at 60 that's a young age, but when somebody says they died at a young age, the implication is that. They had a whole lot more life to live and they were robbed of that.

Right. I don't feel that way about Mara Donna.

Amit: No. Yeah. Cause if he was robbed of it, the robbing occurred decades before when his on-field career essentially ended. That's right. Yeah. Cause all the sadness and the loss happened earlier and he did recover somewhat, you know, there were, there were still, I think, as recently as 2018, there were still people that suspected he was on cocaine.

Michael: Yes. 2018. There's a somewhat. A soccer match where he's acting drunk.

Amit: Yeah. But he did, by some degree recover from the excesses of addiction. I don't know that. I agree with that.

Michael: You know, I don't see it. That to me is the big question. That's still looming over all of this and I have a take on this, but I want to save it.

And I want to pause for a word from our.

Amit: Michael. Do you shop for clothing at thrift stores? I do not. Do you? No, not really. Okay. Why not? The fact that somebody else has worn it? I don't, uh, it doesn't

Michael: say well, yeah, and the same way I don't buy used clothes, but you,

Amit: you, you like used books. I love

Michael: to use books, books. That's a different thing. So what's the difference?

I don't know. I mean, there's something about the way, you know, you imagine the hands that have. Pass through and what it means to like give a friend a book and to like pull it off the shelf or no, just take that one.

Amit: Yeah. There's a history of like, who's Reddit, who's acquired web from

Michael: it. Six degrees of separation aspect.

How do they all get here? It's not like used clothing where it's like, oh, somebody wore that. It's like somebody, let somebody sat with this and sat with these ideas or was into this story.

Amit: So is there a certain place, for example, that perhaps you'd like to get a used

Michael: books? Are you talking about half price books by any chance?

I am because

Amit: you know what? Yeah. Half price books is celebrating 50 years of buying and selling books, movies, and music. There are 125 stores and you can find out more@hpp.com.

Michael: Up to this point in our conversation, we have mostly been talking about that easily knowable information, kind of fact, finding mission. This point in famous and gravy, we transition and try and get more at the inner life of an individual. So the first of the inner life categories, we call man in the mirror.

How did he feel about his roughly. Amit. Do you want to take this?

Amit: Yeah, I will. We had a little bit of an exchange earlier of like, well, are there two marrow? Is there a 25 year old Madonna and a

Michael: 50 year old Maradona, 300 Belmar,

Amit: a hundred pound and 150 pounds, but I'm still going with a consistent, yes.

That he did like it, even when he was bloated and looked almost like no version of his former self. And the reason I'm saying that is two reasons. One, you look at the way he carried himself. I'm not talking about the facial expressions or the eyes, his chin held up. And particularly when held up the chest out, he was a broken man, but he was still.

Proud proud he's was still, he was still kind of a stud underneath in his own eyes, I think. And I think that's like when he looked in the mirror, sometimes I look in the mirror and I don't know if I'm 14 years old or 44 years old. I think that when marijuana did it, he's still mostly seeing that 25 year old.

Michael: I agree with that. It's hard to say though, because I do think that addiction, which is the cloud that's over this whole fucking conversation involves a tremendous amount of self-loathing. I just don't know that that was evident in his literal reflection. I think that self-loathing existed away from the mirror and that when he looked in the mirror, he saw something.

Yeah. Okay. The next inner life question, outgoing message. Like man, in the mirror, we want to know how they felt about the sound of their own voice when they heard it on an answering machine or would they have recorded the voicemail for outgoing message on their cell phone. I'm going to hop in and say, I don't think he liked it because I don't think he likes to talking.

I think from a very early age, he was in a position of having to give interviews and I think he found it tedious. So that's my, uh, outgoing message.

Amit: Yeah. I kind of fell 50 50 on this, you know, he spoke in quick bursts, a lot, one word answers and stuff to some of these interviews. But when you see them in the, like the locker rooms, the after the game celebrations, after the big win, he would like grab the microphone and go interview the other players, coaches.

But I think that's the adrenaline and the ecstasy

Michael: ecstatic. This. Yeah,

Amit: but I also think that what you say has some merit, it's just not what he's about. He's not a, not a talker. He's not an orator so much, which is why I'm going to take that same route. But we should note, I mean, he did host a talk show Dina in like

Michael: 2005 with that, both Castro and paler, I think.

And Mike Tyson

Next category, regrets, public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything kept this person awake at night, I wrote down one thing for the public, which is his addiction to cocaine. That's it? I think that there's a story you can tell yourself if you suffer from addiction or alcoholism, that if I could go back to when that drug was first offered, I wished I'd known more than I would have said.

So that's all I got.

Amit: Yeah. I mean, I can tack onto that. The affiliation with the Italian mafia, which I think was part of his cocaine.

Michael: Oh, damn. Stream those stuff, man. You know what I mean? Like this gets back to the marriage and the net worth it's everything like this clouds, his entire fucking life. Um, did you have more if,

Amit: and if this is not the place for it, speak up, but I wonder if you have sympathy for his usage of cocaine.

Oh, yeah. Oh

Michael: yeah. Fucking a look. I mean, this guy. He's born into hunger, literal hunger, right? It's a two room house is sharing it with seven or eight siblings. There's even a story about him falling into the latrine when he was like three years old or something. I mean like true shantytown poverty. And then he discovered this gift.

He gets a soccer ball at age three and as the singular obsession. With it and he gets better and better as time goes on so much. So that coaches, by the time he's 9, 10, 11, 12, can't even believe how young he is. And then by age 15, he gets his first paycheck and then the rocket ship takes off and he's getting all kinds of signals from the universe of how worthy he is, of things.

He's getting big checks. He's getting all these opportunities and he's experiencing a tremendous amount of. Glory on the soccer. I think that each of those forms of validation builds in him a deeper and deeper and deeper hunger that there is ever no satiation. Right. And so when cocaine enters his life, it's just yet another one.

That's the monster, that's the beast. And I have to imagine that as the addiction takes, hold throughout the eighties, every cocaine molecule entering his brain is just like offering something that nothing else can. And even that, at some point can't even satiate, but it's almost like you've been on this rocket ship and you flew off a cliff.

Where's the ground beneath you, you know? Yes. I think that, that is w what's what's interesting to me about addiction is that it's just the human condition, like taken to an extreme, you know, so my heart goes out to him and I'm sympathetic to him in the, in, in a kind of Buddhist way that I think we're all suffering inside.

Yeah. But I think he's suffering.

Amit: Yeah, I think you put it well, is that if you can achieve anything and you are achieving everything. And so many of these moments is a high and you're just out of highs, right? You're like nothing else is really working. How do I feel any sort of better than this, right?

Which is kind of the human condition. It's always this constant. Improvement. And when you are so validated as the best in the world, you get everything you want for a while. You've gone from literally just living in a shanty in a matter of like 16 years to being a mega millionaire, most wanted star and.

Just can't find anything else. And you're still just looking for something else to elevate or at least change the way that you feel or think. And unfortunately that's what he landed on. And so I think the takeaway for me is that you used a phrase, I don't remember in which episode, but that at some point you have to just say this as enough, Kenny

Michael: Rogers.

And I think

Amit: that's, you know, we're talking about fame here, but I think you're also just talking about life that at some point you just have to say, okay, I don't crave anymore. I'm riding this wave as best I can. And it doesn't have to be better. Yeah. It's a real quick on the regrets. I just want your opinion.

Do you think he regretted the hand of. No, I don't think so either he

Michael: owned up to it, but I'm glad you asked next category. Good dreams, bad dreams. Did they have a haunted look in the eye and our turmoil? Inner demons, unresolved trauma. I'm going to say bad if you say good, but I don't know what the fuck we're doing.

Amit: Oh, I think they were good up until the addiction and the unraveling. Yeah. And you see it, like you see a big difference in his eyes when you watch a videotape from say 1989 versus one and 2004.

Michael: All right. Second to last category, cocktail, coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity?

It's maybe a question of what kind of drug sounds like the most fun to partake with this person? Another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access, unlock something that you're most curious about. What do you got? I can do

Amit: cannabis. I just can't go into that sort of category of, I would say cannabis

Michael: is safer than

Amit: alcohol for this guy.

Yeah, I know. So I don't want the coffee because coffee is in orators drink and last we've kind of said that's not our perception of him. Yeah. He did look like kind of a fun drunk. Um, I'm talking about in the eighties, he jumps up and down and he puts his arms around you. And so passion is there and yeah.

So I'm going to say, I would love to have cocktails with him in 1986. I think that's fair. Even though there is the background of cocaine and everything, but yeah, if I can have cocktails with them in 1996, that's

Michael: what I'm going to do. I think that's a great answer when he's on the high. I bet he was a

Amit: fucking blast, the party with, and I think he makes you feel.

Fantastic. You saw the way he pumped up his teammates and stuff in the locker room afterwards. He's like, you're the star of this

Michael: national championship team. If you go out and party and with marijuana before, you know, the demons have arrived. Fuck. Yeah, that'd be a good night. Yeah, I want coffee. Okay. And it's actually has more to do with my ignorance of the sport of soccer.

We haven't used the word genius and that is used a lot though. It's used a lot and appropriately. Athleticism is its own flavor of genius. And I would love to go deep on the tactical side. I would love to actually have him map out for me how this works because of what I'd really like to see is what, if any metaphors can be extracted from that.

If he's got the singular obsession that has led to his greatness, I'd like to believe that there is something about the game itself that can teach us bigger life

Amit: lessons. Sure. And no doubt. He looks at the field in a completely different. And then somebody else, and that's just his natural ability. So

Michael: because it was a genius.

I want the coffee. Good answer. Thank you. All right, man. We're here. The Vander VanDerBeek named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said in varsity blues. I

Amit: don't want your life. Do you want to go?

Michael: I think I have something to say. Okay. So I mentioned at the top that I was going to have a hard time trying to talk myself into being north of 30%.

One way I've been thinking about this one is by trying to ask what's it all about? There's a part of me that wants to break down life into a, how many good moments versus how many bad moments did you have? Obviously that misses a lot of stuff though, right? I don't think it's a good way to look at a life.

The strongest case I can make for a yes to the VanDerBeek here is that I do think, I wonder on balance. If he didn't have more moments of joy, elation, ecstasy, excitement, passion, even if that's 51% versus 49% of despair, alienation, depression, sadness, and regret. That's the strongest case I can make for the VanDerBeek here.

I really tried to talk myself into north of 30% and I can't get there. Yeah. So I'm a no.

Amit: How about you? So I'll, I'll try to talk it through, I think, as you did, of like, there were those moments that could outnumber the suffering and that the number of good moments, or just let's do very binary, right? Like you're counting cards that are more moments of meaning and joy than there are moments of suffering that might be true.

But I think the argument that I would possibly make in favor of the VanDerBeek is also having. Purpose. So you look at the role that this guy played in the lives of so many people like Argentina, recovering from where it was and winning a world cup like that actually is life-changing for a lot of people, you know, there are probably a lot of people that will go to 85 years old in the country of Argentina.

And they're like, what's the best moment of your life. Even though this person just worked in a factory their entire life. And they're going to say in 1986, when we won the world cup, Yeah. And th that could not have happened without him. Same with, you know, there are people throughout Italy that may also say at the end of their life, what's the best moment of your life.

And there'll be like, well, when we won the Italian championship and he, he did that, he changed a lot of lives and I don't think, you know, they were necessarily. Saddened by his downfall because he left them with all this sense of pride and they are taking those memories with him. It's almost like he had to make, like, I'm not making a Nelson Mandela analogy fully here, but you know, he was a sacrifice for that.

And I think that's a case. That one can make for

Michael: meaning it's a good point. My framing was really confined to the experience of the individual. Yeah. And it didn't take into account legacy or positive impacts you had on strangers or a country. But I think this

Amit: is the case at the end of Joel. Cause he too knew like he too, has those memories of people chanting his name and everything and they're not doing that because they absolutely love him.

They're doing it because he's lifting their city or their nation. And he's doing that much in the way that any hero did. So there is a case for meaning to be made, no matter how much the personal struggle was, there's a case for sacrifice or even martyrdom. However, I side with you on the VanDerBeek, which is no, and that is the.

The loss of control and a loss of mental faculty, you have to ultimately look after yourself, even if you are lifting up nations and cities and to lose yourself that much and be that powerless and struggle that much. And it seems like never really being at a level set. You know. Yeah. It's interesting

Michael: to hear you say that though, is that it seems to me, control is an illusion.

I do not believe addiction is a problem of willpower. I think it's misunderstood. Right. Yeah. I mean, you don't have to be an alcoholic or an addict to feel like you have addictive behavior to eat too much, to watch too much porn to gamble too much, to be a workaholic. We're all kind of caught up in the same problem of trying to seek and find validation.

And the solution does seem to be. Having a better relationship with the idea of

Amit: control itself. Yeah. If I'm going to put it a different way. The reason I say no is I don't want to peak in my twenties and thirties and a lot of people, you can say that for a lot of athletes that they peak in their twenties and thirties, certainly performance-wise but mentally.

And it's twenties and thirties. It seems like his, his moments of the most mental clarity and being at peace we're younger. And that's what I don't want. I want the staircase to always be going up in some way.

Michael: Yeah, me too. I think what we're really talking about as longevity, but like the journey, the whole journey.

Yeah. All right. Well, I think we're there. The pearly gates. You're Diego Maradona you've died and you're Catholic too. Um, so you get to meet St. Peter, who's waiting for you. Uh, the part of the gates, you have an opportunity to make your pitch floor is yours.

Amit: I am Diego Maradona. So you St. Peter are the bouncer forgot.

In some ways. So on the other side of you is God to a lot of this world, God is football. So let me explain that. I don't believe in neither of those are true. I believe God has God. I'm a Catholic. Um, but I want to tell you about. What I did for the Naples football club and what I did for the country of Argentina brown, taking this as pride.

When both of those teams prevailed in championships, you had people chanting people, embracing people United. Uh, team, a place that, that I identify with and what I enabled was belonging. It was belonging for a city, for a nation, for a world. Belonging.

Michael: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of famous and gravy. If you're enjoying our show, please go to apple podcast to rate and review us. It really does help new listeners to find the show. We would love to see you on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at famous and gravy. We've got lots of fun stuff there on our Twitter feed.

Also, please sign up for our newsletter on our website, famous and gravy.com. Famous and gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss, original theme music by Kevin Strang. And thanks also to our sponsor half-price books. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.