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Maradona Was an Extraordinary Human Being, A Man of True Values, With A Revolutionary Spirit, Who Always Stood Up for His Convictions

Conversations with Didier Roustan
Salim Lamrani
Cet article est une traduction de :
Maradona était un être formidable, porteur de vraies valeurs, avec un esprit révolutionnaire, qui a toujours défendu ses convictions [fr]

Résumé

In these conversations, Didier Roustan, an iconic figure in sports journalism, retraces his career and recalls his major encounters with football legends. Co-founder of the world’s first professional footballers’ union alongside Diego Maradona and Éric Cantona, he served as its secretary-general from 1995 to 1998. Deeply committed to young people, he founded the association Foot Citoyens, whose aim is to promote the values of respect, courage, and tolerance through sport. He passes on to future generations his experience, his human values, and a noble and exacting vision of journalism.

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Texte intégral

1Born in 1957 in Brazzaville, Didier Roustan spent his childhood in Cannes – a city to which he remained deeply attached and where he developed a passion for football. Gifted with real talent, at the age of sixteen he trained with AS Cannes’s professional team, which was then playing in the second division. But his rebellious temperament probably deprived him of what could have been a respectable career.

2In 1976, after earning his baccalauréat, he completed a three-month internship at TF1. His deep knowledge of football and his engaging personality quickly won over the journalists there. Georges de Caunes decided to bring him into the channel’s sports department, particularly the program Téléfoot, which Roustan would later direct from 1986 to 1989.

3After thirteen years of loyal service, Didier Roustan left TF1 to join Canal+, where he hosted a multi-sport show that took him around the world and led him to produce some memorable reports. In 1992, he joined Antenne 2, where he devoted himself entirely to football coverage. From 1999 until 2024 – with a three-year interlude at TV5 Monde – he collaborated with L’Équipe TV.

4An iconic figure of sports journalism, and regarded as one of France’s foremost football experts, Didier Roustan met many of the game’s greatest legends. He also co-founded the world’s first global union for professional footballers, alongside Diego Maradona and Éric Cantona, serving as its secretary-general from 1995 to 1998.

5Deeply committed to youth, he created the association Foot Citoyens, whose goal is to promote the values of respect, courage, and tolerance through sport.

6A lover of the beautiful game and nostalgic for socially engaged footballers, Didier Roustan recounted his remarkable journey in Puzzle, published just a few months before his sudden passing in 2024, taken by illness. He leaves to future generations his experience, his human values, and a noble, demanding vision of journalism.

Salim Lamrani: Didier Roustan, what is the origin of your latest book, Puzzle?

Didier Roustan: For several years, people had been asking me to write my memoirs, but I was always reluctant to produce a traditional autobiography. Still, I wanted to pass on my life experiences, my ideas, and my reflections to younger generations. Since the written word endures, I finally decided to go ahead with the book. It was also a chance to pay tribute to those who have mattered to me.

However, I didn’t want to write a classic, chronological biography. I preferred to keep a certain freedom of form – with independent chapters, not directly connected, written as inspiration came. I also wanted it to be a kind of Ali Baba’s cave, where readers could dip in and out of the stories as they pleased, without following a linear order, and then piece them together afterward – hence the title Puzzle.

There’s a bit of everything in this book: my footballing philosophy, my major encounters, my forty-seven years in television and how it has evolved in its relationship with the world’s most popular sport, as well as some great anecdotes.

SL: What is your first memory of football? What drew you to this sport?

DR: I come from a family of footballers. My uncle was a professional player in Cannes before the war. My father was an amateur footballer. On my mother’s side – she’s from the Caribbean – football was also very popular. My grandfather was passionate about it.

I was born in Africa and arrived in Cannes at the age of three. The stadium, where the AS Cannes professional team played in the second division at the time, was just a hundred meters from our home. So I was immersed in football from my earliest childhood.

My first vivid memory goes back to when I was four: my father took me to the stadium one Sunday afternoon. There were two or three thousand spectators in that eight-thousand-seat ground. I was struck by the roar of the crowd, the colors, the shared emotions – the cheers and the whistles alike. I was instantly captivated by that atmosphere.

It was pouring rain that day. Since we lived so close, we walked to the stadium. We came home afterward soaked to the skin – which earned my father quite a scolding from my mother.

SL: Tell us about the Téléfoot adventure on TF1 – a program that would leave its mark on several generations of football fans.

DR: With my baccalauréat in hand, I had begun studying to become a physical education teacher, but I quickly lost steam and decided to enter the working world. My mother and sister were living in Paris, which made it easier for me to get an internship at TF1. It was a different era – you could walk into the building without any security checks. I even remember one day when protesters stormed the studios during a live broadcast.

So I did a three-month internship. Passionate about football, I already had a solid knowledge of the game. In addition to playing for AS Cannes, I used to spend hours at the Maison de la Presse on the Croisette, devouring sports magazines. The owners, who knew I couldn’t afford to buy them, appreciated my curiosity and let me read them on the spot. I was always careful not to damage them.

During the 1970 World Cup, when I was twelve, I went there every day – even to read the foreign press, though I only understood French. That’s how I built my football culture.

At the time, sports desks were far less specialized. Of the roughly twenty journalists in TF1’s sports department, only three focused on football: Jean Rénal, who also covered basketball; Pierre Cangioni, who also handled boxing; and Georges Dominique, who was an all-around sports reporter. Most of them were already middle-aged. My first boss, Georges de Caunes – a pioneer of the ORTF – could have been my grandfather. I was only eighteen.

SL: What were your daily tasks?

DR: Normally, an intern made coffee, cut out wire reports, and ran small errands. I was lucky enough to contribute more, thanks to my football knowledge – a rare asset in a newsroom with few specialists. For instance, when footage from foreign leagues arrived, my colleagues often struggled to identify the players. But having devoured the sports press for years, I knew all the European teams.

I didn’t have to wait for the famous Liverpool – Saint-Étienne match in 1977 to know who Jimmy Case, Kevin Keegan, or Terry McDermott were. For the record, I had already been to Anfield at the age of fourteen.

I think I managed to impress them with my knowledge. They sent me to cover matches in the Paris region – in Saint-Ouen or at Red Star. I did the interviews and came back with the film reels. I also handled the editing and wrote the commentary. I quickly became professionally indispensable.

On top of that, I think they liked my personality too: I was eighteen and didn’t take myself too seriously. They grew fond of me – especially Jean Reynal, who was about my father’s age and became something of a spiritual father to me. He was from Montpellier. We shared a passion for pinball and spent hours playing in a bar next to Cognac G.

That’s how my name reached the ears of the boss, Georges de Caunes.

I was in the right place at the right time. Just as my internship was ending, TF1 signed an agreement with the French Football Federation and the Football League to launch a weekly football show, Téléfoot, set to debut in September 1977. It was Jean Reynal who came up with the title.

De Caunes needed to recruit football specialists for this new program and reinforce the small existing team. He called me into his office and offered me a screen test, along with an extended, paid internship. “If you prove yourself,” he told me, “we’ll offer you a permanent contract.”

In the end, I stayed at TF1 for thirteen years – with the luxury of leaving of my own accord.

SL: You’ve met some of the greatest legends of the game. Let’s start with Diego Maradona. Tell us about the player and the man you knew.

DR: I first met him in France at an award ceremony. I also saw him again when he came with Boca Juniors to face Paris Saint-Germain. But I really got to know him when I made a documentary about his career.

One day, he arrived in France from Cuba via Madrid to receive his Super Ballon d’Or in early January 1995. He was accompanied by an old Italian journalist friend – Gianni Minà – both an intellectual and a passionate football lover. I went to pick them up at the airport and arranged with customs officers to wait for them directly at baggage claim.

After a typically Latin American embrace, Maradona pointed at me and said: “Didier, I know you’re great friends with Cantona. I’m here for three days, and I want to see Cantona.”

It was quite a challenge because Cantona was in the thick of the Boxing Day period in Manchester, playing every three days. So I called Canto and told him about Maradona’s wish. He had never met him, but he held him in immense admiration. It’s true that there are certain similarities between these two extraordinary characters.

Two days later, Cantona was in Paris, and I organized that memorable meeting between two legends at the Intercontinental Hotel. Gianni and I filmed this extraordinary encounter.

SL: What was the purpose of the meeting?

DR: The aim of the meeting was to create a global union for players. It was an old project that Maradona had carried with him since 1986. He rightly believed it was unacceptable that footballers – who are at the very heart of the game – had no voice. No one ever asked for their opinion on competitions or rule changes. Cantona, true to his spirit, was immediately enthusiastic.

At the end of the meeting, Éric took me aside and said, “Let’s not beat around the bush. You’ve got to take charge of this, otherwise it will never happen.” I already had my career, but I eventually agreed to take the plunge into the unknown.

So I went to Buenos Aires to present the idea to Maradona and set up the structure: a president, a vice president, a secretary general, and then convene an assembly of players. For four or five years, I travelled to Argentina once a month for a week to work with him and take stock of our progress.

Latin America was fertile ground for such a project, because South American players – having lived through or witnessed military dictatorships – had a much stronger political consciousness than Europeans, who devote themselves almost entirely to their careers. They were naturally more receptive to the idea of a union. That’s how the International Association of Professional Footballers (AIFP) was born.

This gave me the privilege of being very close to Diego Maradona. I was able to discover the extraordinary man behind the brilliant footballer. He was a remarkable human being, a bearer of genuine values, with a revolutionary spirit – despite his struggles with drugs and his inconsistency in pursuing his ambitions. He was a truly exceptional figure.

I also came to know many of his teammates from Boca Juniors and Argentina’s 1986 squad: they adored him and held him in boundless admiration.

Being Maradona was immensely difficult, because he no longer belonged to himself. The only place where he was truly free was on a football pitch. And above all, he never hid – he always stood up for his convictions.

SL: Éric Cantona is also one of your close friends. What can you tell us about “The King”?

DR: He’s an extraordinary man, a true artist. He has a very strong personality, but he’s also extremely sensitive. He’s someone of great inner depth, and it’s a privilege to have spent so much time with him. He’s a wonderful person – but like Maradona, you have to be able to keep up with him.

We experienced the 1994 World Cup in the United States together. It was an epic adventure, full of highs and a few difficult moments. He’s a magnificent human being, brimming with generosity.

SL: What can you tell us about Michel Platini?

DR: Platini marked a major turning point in French football. Without the Platini generation – from 1976 to 1986 – France would probably never have won the 1998 World Cup. If French football is now recognized throughout the world, with players in all the top clubs, it’s largely thanks to that generation, crowned by the victory at Euro 1984 and the semi-final run in the 1982 World Cup.

When he emerged on the national and international stage, France was virtually absent from major competitions, having failed to reach the World Cup finals for many years. It’s worth remembering that at the time, only sixteen nations took part. Today there are thirty-two, and soon there will be forty-eight – which means that the major footballing nations almost always qualify, except for occasional accidents like Italy or the Netherlands.

In 1978, nine of the sixteen qualified teams came from Europe – and the Eastern European nations were formidable. Yugoslavia, then still united, was a powerhouse before it split into six countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union. If France were divided into six entities, it would be far less competitive. At the time, the USSR was also a regular participant in the finals before breaking up into sixteen republics. In fact, the very first Euro final in 1960 was between the USSR and Yugoslavia, with the Soviets emerging victorious.

With Les Verts of Saint-Étienne, Platini restored hope to French football. The team shone in European competition, reaching the semi-finals in 1975 and the final in 1976. French football was known for its technical quality but criticized for its mental fragility – to the point that people used to say we were the “world champions of friendly matches.” Saint-Étienne broke that curse and demonstrated true mental strength, paving the way for all of French football.

Within that team was the genius of Michel Platini, who would go on to become the best player in the world for several seasons.

SL: Younger generations are sometimes unaware of what a remarkable player he was.

DR: Platini was a true phenomenon. At that time, the Bosman ruling didn’t exist, and each club was allowed only two foreign players. When Platini joined Juventus in 1982, the club already had six world champions in its ranks: Zoff, Tardelli, Rossi, Gentile, Cabrini, and Scirea. Despite that, he established himself as the leader of the team, became its best player, and finished as Serie A’s top scorer three seasons in a row. Platini was an extraordinary player.

He was different from Maradona: the Argentine possessed an incomparable aura. Platini was made for Juventus, just as Maradona was made for Naples.

In life, Platini was a rather complex character – like all great champions. Everything rested on his shoulders: if France lost, it was his fault. The press was less invasive than it is today, but it could still be merciless. That was the price of glory. At times, he would stop talking to journalists altogether. That doesn’t happen anymore – if Mbappé, for instance, has a poor game, the press is far less harsh than it was with Platini.

I remember in 1981, even though Platini had already helped France return to the World Cup in 1978 and had four years of international experience behind him, he was booed at the Parc des Princes every time he touched the ball.

But he’s a good man – warm, approachable – and I’ve always had a respectful relationship with him. It’s a shame he was brought down at UEFA. Perhaps he was naïve, soft-hearted, or too eager to become FIFA president. They made him fall, and it was not good news for football.

SL: You have a particular affection for rebellious players. Could you tell us about Sócrates, the Brazilian footballer, and his famous Corinthians democracy?

DR: I knew Sócrates quite well during the time of the World Players’ Union. I was close friends with his brother Raí in Paris, and he was the one who put us in touch. I invited Sócrates several times to AIFP meetings.

I have vivid memories of an unforgettable evening at his home in Ribeirão Preto, about 300 kilometers from São Paulo. He was an exceptional character – highly politically aware, extremely intelligent, and above all, a magnificent player.

The Corinthians Democracy dates back to 1981, when he played for Corinthians in São Paulo. That period coincided with a spectacular brand of football and excellent results for the team. Brazil had been living under military dictatorship since 1964. In 1981, a new sporting director, Adilson Monteiro Alves – an opponent of the dictatorship – was appointed. With politically conscious players like Sócrates, Casagrande, and Zé Maria, they turned the club into a democratic laboratory. The management was no longer the sole decision-maker: from then on, the players voted. Every decision was made collectively – training camps, match bonuses, recruitment, and so on.

The goal was clear: to show Brazilian society, and Latin America more broadly, that there was nothing better than democracy. Sócrates told me they were under pressure from the military, but their status as stars afforded them relative protection. In 1981, Sócrates was captain of the Seleção. Even so, there were risks – the regime remained brutal.

Before certain matches, taking advantage of a slight political thaw and the return of partial elections, Corinthians would take the field behind a banner that read: “Don’t forget to vote.” They even wore jerseys emblazoned with “Vote!” on the back. The team managed to raise awareness across the country and contributed to Brazil’s gradual return to democracy.

Footballers wield enormous power. If they became more socially engaged, society could make tremendous progress. Most of them are millionaires and could help build a fairer world. Unfortunately, privilege often traps them in a bubble, detached from the reality of ordinary people.

That’s why Maradona was so great: he knew that by creating a union, he would earn the enmity of football’s powerful institutions. He already had issues with FIFA, yet he chose to expose himself further – to defend his sport and the players less famous than himself.

SL: Aimé Jacquet is a figure very dear to the French people. He brought us immense collective joy in 1998 with France’s first World Cup victory. What can you tell us about him?

DR: I didn’t know him very well. In the 1980s, he was coaching Bordeaux, which was among the top clubs at the time. He had a kind of “old France” quality about him.

I have an anecdote about him. In his team he had René Girard, trained in the Nîmes school of hard knocks, who was known for his rough play. Gernot Rohr, another player, was also quite combative. During a Bordeaux – Saint-Étienne match, the two of them spent the entire game harassing Platini. I’ve never liked that kind of behavior in football. In my match summary, I used the expression “les pépés flingueurs” – “the gun-toting old men.”

One day, I took Julien Clerc, a big Girondins fan, to watch a training session in Bordeaux. After the session, Aimé Jacquet took me aside to express his displeasure about the term.

He’s a very polite man who always addresses people formally. Without being a revolutionary, he’s an honest, upright person – a man of real values.

SL: What is your most cherished football memory?

DR: I have so many memories – so many journeys, emotions… But I would say it was the day when, as a youth player with AS Cannes, we beat Juventus of Turin on penalties during the Aix tournament in 1971.

The most beautiful thing about football is having played it. At that time, before the Platini generation, whenever we faced an international team, we already felt an inferiority complex. We’d say to ourselves, “My God, how many are we going to concede?!” And that day, we drew 1–1 … and then we won.

SL: Which World Cup left the deepest impression on you?

DR: The 1970 World Cup, with Pelé’s Brazil – it was magnificent. I was twelve years old, and I experienced that tournament with incredible intensity. I grew up with Pelé’s Brazil and, soon after, with Cruyff’s Ajax. I was indelibly marked by that style of football. 1970 was pure magic.

After that, I hesitate between 1982 and 1986. In 1982, the Brazil of Sócrates and Zico should have won – that team was extraordinary. I had the privilege of commentating on the Seleção’s matches in Barcelona, at the Sarria Stadium, an English-style ground where you were very close to the pitch. I was devastated by their defeat to Italy. It was cruel – and it wasn’t good for football, because at the time, people tended to model their play on whoever won the World Cup. Today, the reference point is more the Champions League.

And then 1986 – that was Maradona. And that, you never forget.

SL: You’re a lover of creative football and the number 10 – which has almost disappeared today. What kind of football best matches your sensibility? What do you think of the game’s overall evolution?

DR: I’ve always preferred creative, attacking, expressive football – the kind that takes the initiative. That kind of football has become relatively rare. You can still find it here and there, through Guardiola for instance, though taken to an extreme.

Today, the physical side has taken precedence over technique, with an ever-present demand for speed. I take less pleasure in watching modern football – it’s far less epic than in certain eras. There’s less room for technical players. I don’t want to sound like a nostalgic or a reactionary, but it’s clear that we now see more athletes on the pitch than genuine footballers.

SL: Which players, coaches, or teams still make you dream today?

DR: Dream might be too strong a word. With the way football has evolved, it no longer really lends itself to dreaming. It’s become a spectacle in which the game itself occupies less and less space – drowned out by transfers, backstage drama, and everything that surrounds it. Today, there’s just so much money in football…

At its core, football was once what Pasolini described: “Football is an essential value for restoring dignity to those who have nothing.” It’s lost some of that popular essence. Going to a match in certain stadiums today is practically like cutting off an arm – the ticket prices have become exorbitant.

Football has remained very popular in South America because the financial stakes aren’t the same. Of course, the level of play has declined somewhat, since the best players leave for Europe at a very young age. Before, they stayed much longer at their original clubs. Zico, for instance, didn’t leave Flamengo for Udinese until he was twenty-eight. When we talk about Brazil in 1982, most of the Seleção’s starting players were still playing in their home country – except for Falcão, who was at Roma.

Enzo Francescoli, the former Racing Club and Olympique de Marseille player who is now River Plate’s sporting director, has often told me the same thing.

Today, the dream in football still exists, but only in fragments. It sometimes reappears through great human adventures – like with Bielsa at Marseille or Leeds. Or with Klopp at Liverpool, because his story went beyond football: he restored a sense of dignity to the people of Liverpool.

SL: Tell us about Olympique de Marseille and its iconic figure, Bernard Tapie.

DR: Marseille has an environment that’s highly conducive to passion for football – but there’s a flip side: it’s a difficult place to build long-term success. Beyond consistency, the key to everything is money. The perfect example is Guardiola’s Manchester City – you need both financial power and continuity. That comes from qualifying regularly for the Champions League and maintaining a steady sporting policy.

Tapie was a tremendous catalyst for energy. He had ideas, charisma, persuasive strength, and the cunning of an old fox. Above all, he had the conviction that nothing was impossible – in a country where defeatism is often part of the tradition.

Miguel Hidalgo once told me an anecdote. When Tapie arrived at OM in 1986, he asked him: “Who’s the best defender in the world?” Hidalgo replied, “Karl-Heinz Förster.” At the time, Förster was playing for Stuttgart. Tapie told him he was going to bring him to Marseille. “Impossible,” said Hidalgo, “he’ll never leave Stuttgart for OM. Even the Italian clubs haven’t managed to sign him.” But Tapie chartered a private plane, met with Förster … and he signed for Marseille. That was Tapie’s power.

He also had a less poetic side – charming, yes, but manipulative too. It was sometimes wiser to keep your distance. As I was the head of Téléfoot, I didn’t want to be trapped in a friendship that might have limited my freedom of speech. I always insisted on preserving my independence, despite his persistence.

It must be said that he wanted to control everything – and in football, there are always imponderables. That urge led him to cross certain lines and compromise a sense of ethics. And because he was impatient by nature, he burned his wings when he entered politics.

SL: Which stadiums have left the deepest impression on you, in France and around the world?

DR: Football always takes me back to my childhood. For me, the most beautiful stadium in the world is still the Hespérides in Cannes, just a hundred meters from my home. Its capacity was only about 10,000, but I played there with the youth teams and cheered on the professionals from the stands.

If I set sentiment aside, I’d say the Vélodrome – but the old one, the one I went to with my father, who was from Marseille. Back then, there was an athletics track and wooden seats. I thought it had a soul. The Parc des Princes is also a magnificent stadium, as is the one in Saint-Étienne.

I’ve always had a soft spot for South American stadiums – they have a soul. I love, for instance, Huracán’s stadium in Buenos Aires. It’s uncovered, the seats are concrete with armrests, but everyone stands. I prefer that kind of place to ultra-modern arenas, which often feel too sleek, almost artificial. I also have a special affection for the old Wembley: it breathed football – it was a real temple, and it felt more human.

SL: Who, in your opinion, is the greatest player of all time?

DR: It inevitably comes down to Maradona and Pelé. Pelé had everything – he practically invented modern football. He had speed, power, flair, creativity, heading ability, both feet, dribbling skills, and courage.

Maradona also had almost everything, except heading and his right foot – but he had an even greater gift for dribbling. When you think of Maradona, you go beyond football itself: there’s a sense of romanticism, of humanity, that touches you and in which you can recognize yourself.

I met Pelé during the time of the World Players’ Union, when he was Brazil’s Minister of Sports. I had great affection for the man.

If I had to choose, I’d say Pelé. In fact, the old-timers who saw both at their peak – like César Luis Menotti – all say that Pelé was truly out of this world.

SL: Who do you consider the greatest number 9 of all time?

DR: Gerd Müller is the striker who defined my generation. He was an old-school number 9 – a true predator in the box. Not very tall, with a low center of gravity and enormous thighs that allowed him to spin on a dime, and an unmatched instinct for goal. He was deadly – with his feet or his head. Truly remarkable.

From a more recent, modern era, I would say Marco van Basten – he had absolutely everything: efficient with both feet, excellent in the air, capable of playing in behind or with his back to goal.

SL: And if you had to choose just one player?

DR: I would say Maradona. Because he transcended football itself – he embodied genius, romanticism, rebellion, and a deeply human dimension that anyone could connect with.

SL: Let’s talk about your association Foot Citoyens, whose goal is to promote values such as courage, tolerance, respect, and perseverance. How did it come about?

DR: When I was young in Cannes, my parents weren’t around, and my grandparents raised me from the age of eleven to seventeen. Later, my father and mother returned. It was adolescence – that age when you discover freedom. You start going out with girls, going to nightclubs, drugs are around… and if you’re not well surrounded, things can go wrong very quickly. I had a lot of freedom, and I took full advantage of it. I was on the edge – not about to fall into serious delinquency, because I had a solid upbringing, family warmth, and never felt abandoned – but I could easily have slipped into the small foolishness of youth.

Football gave me structure. It helped me through my coach, who was first and foremost an educator. My passion for the sport, and the presence of teammates who came from stable families, guided me back to the right path.

The values of football are, above all, educational: being confronted with injustice, learning self-control, living with others, sharing with people from all walks of life, developing a sense of work well done, accepting rules, cultivating generosity and selflessness. My coach – without being a substitute father – was a true role model.

Football made me the man I am and have always been. Later, in Marseille, I met up again with friends I had played with in youth teams. They had become coaches or managers in amateur clubs. That’s when I discovered the difficulties facing today’s youth, for whom life is often more complicated.

That’s how we created the Foot Citoyens association. We worked with sports psychologists to help young people orient themselves toward essential values through their passion for football. We collaborated with the Youth Judicial Protection Service, with associations, and with prisons – with the aim of restoring young people’s confidence in their abilities and helping them to fight against prejudice such as racism and homophobia.

Foot Citoyens was an adventure that lasted fifteen years. In a way, it was my way of giving back to football everything it had given me.

SL: In your opinion, what positive developments could shape the football of tomorrow?

DR: Football has unfortunately become a tool for money and power. It has lost its original purpose – today, money calls the shots. Everything has become globalized. In the past, teams had strong cultural identities tied to their regions. Today, there’s a growing uniformity in the game: matches played at a thousand miles an hour, with more goals, but sometimes at the expense of flavor.

Yet what makes football beautiful is the value of the goal. There can be magnificent 0–0 draws, but we tend to forget that. There’s a constant trend toward adding new rules – VAR, five substitutions, changes to the offside law – which are gradually Americanizing the sport.

SL: One last question: football is, above all, about emotion – a sentimiento, as the Argentinians say?

DR: When Maradona returned to Boca Juniors, his boyhood club, I was authorized to attend the team’s training camp before his first match to make a report. I asked him what Boca represented to him. He replied: “Boca Juniors es un sentimiento.” That says it all. There’s nothing more to explain. There’s even a beautiful Argentine song on that very theme.

A feeling is stronger than an emotion. An emotion is a spark, an explosion in a moment of time. A feeling is much deeper – something firmly rooted, something that goes back to childhood. It’s a truth in a world of false narratives.

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Salim Lamrani, « Maradona Was an Extraordinary Human Being, A Man of True Values, With A Revolutionary Spirit, Who Always Stood Up for His Convictions »Études caribéennes [En ligne], 15 | Novembre 2025, mis en ligne le , consulté le 09 novembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudescaribeennes/37882 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15373

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Salim Lamrani

Professeur des universités, Faculté de Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Département d’études hispaniques et latino-américaines, Université de La Réunion

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