Sports personalty..... Diego Maradona

Hi Dassyb blog readers, hope you had a great week. Its Saturday and I will be kick starting the series on sports personalities with Argentine legend Maradona. So sit back and read on because their is a lot to come on this series. Don't forget to drop your comments. Happy reading....

Diego Maradona

 Ex football player

Full name: Diego Armando Maradona Franco

Date of birth:30 October 1960 (age 55)

Place of birth: Lanús , Buenos Aires , Argentina

Height: 1.65 m (5 ft 5 in)

Playing position: Attacking midfielder

Best known as: The hero of Argentina's 1986 World Cup win

Diego Maradona is the Babe Ruth of Argentinian soccer, a pudgy, charming and hard-partying star who dominated his country's favorite sport. Maradona is best remembered for helping Argentina win the 1986 World Cup with two goals in a quarterfinal match against England; on the first he punched the ball in with his hand, a sneaky maneuver that went unseen by the referee. (Maradona wryly credited the goal to "a little bit of Maradona's head, a little bit of the hand of God.") Maradona was a goal-scoring midfielder for Argentina in four World Cups (1982, 1986, 1990 and 1994) and played professionally for more than two decades. Among his many pro clubs were FC Barcelona (1982-84) and SSC Napoli (1984-91). His career included plenty of controversy: he was suspended for 15 months in 1991 after testing postiive for cocaine, suspended again in 1994 after failing another drug test, and ran up an unpaid income tax bill in Italy that eventually exceeded 30 million Euros. Photos of Maradona looking bloated and decidedly unathletic were commonplace in the 1990s, and he survived a heart attack in 2004, but he never quite lost the public's affection. In 2005 he began hosting his own television show in Argentina titled La Noche del Diez, or "The Night of the Number Ten."

Career stats 

Youth career

1968–1969 Estrella Roja

1970–1974 Los Cebollitas

1975–1976 Argentinos Juniors

Senior career*

Years.           Team Apps † (Gls

1976–1981 Argentinos Juniors 166 (116)

1981–1982 Boca Juniors 40 (28)

1982–1984 Barcelona 36 (22)

1984–1991 Napoli 188 (81)

1992–1993 Sevilla 26 (5)

1993–1994 Newell's Old Boys 5 (0)

1995–1997 Boca Juniors 30 (7)

Total 491 (259)

National team

1977–1979 Argentina U20 24 (13)

1977–1994 Argentina 91 (34)

Teams managed

1994 Mandiyú de Corrientes

1995 Racing Club

2008–2010 Argentina

2011–2012 Al Wasl

Villa Fiorito, Maradona's hometown, is a slum on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Some sources list his birthplace as Lanus, but the biography on his official site names Villa Fiorito... Maradona had his stomach stapled in a weight-loss operation in 2005... Lionel Messi, an Argetine soccer star of the 21st century, has often been compared with the young Maradona.

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