Online Reporter
ON the football pitch, Diego Maradona was revered as a god, but in his final days the legendary footballer is alleged to have been treated more like an animal.
This week Argentina has been gripped by the start of a five-month trial in which seven of the people tasked with caring for the man who led the country to the 1986 World Cup are accused of his homicide with possible intent.
Maradona died aged 60 from heart disease at his rented home in Tigre, near Buenos Aires, on November 25, 2020, two weeks after undergoing brain surgery.
The prosecution claims that the team paid to look after him were criminally negligent.
In heated scenes, Maradona’s former lover, Veronica Ojeda, was heard shouting “daughter of a bitch” at one of the accused as the hearing got under way on Tuesday.
Outside the court in San Isidro, north of Argentina’s capital, a fan held up a placard with the message “Justice for D10S” — a nickname mixing Maradona’s shirt number and the Spanish word for God.
Others had tears in their eyes as they chanted his name.
There have been claims that Maradona drank beer in the morning and was given sleeping pills dissolved in his booze at night while he was under the accused’s medical care.
WhatsApp messages were uncovered in which his neurologist, Leopoldo Luque, wrote “the fat man’s going to end up kicking the bucket”.
And it is alleged Maradona was washed down with a hosepipe rather than being helped to the shower.
The former Barcelona and Napoli player has been adored in the South American nation since his moments of individual brilliance — and his infamous handball “hand of God goal” against England — saw them lift the World Cup in Mexico in 1986.
Considerable amounts of his fortune, once estimated at £75million, were blown on addictions to alcohol and cocaine, which contributed to his terrible state of health. — Sun.
