Maradona Statue at Napoli : Napoli have unveiled a statue with a golden left foot in honour of club legend Diego Maradona.
The Italian club made an emotional tribute on Saturday, one day before what would have been the 62nd birthday of the iconic Argentine forward, who passed away in November 2020.
And Luciano Spalletti’s side marked the occasion with a 4-0 thrashing of Sassuolo thanks to Victor Osimhen’s hat-trick at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, named after their former star, to move further clear at the top of the table.
The Nigeria attacker has now scored 7 goals in the Serie A this season as he leads the top scorers chart after 12 matches.
Diego Maradona would have turned 62 on October 30th and the Serie A side took the opportunity to honor their late legend.
Maradona Statue at Napoli
Maradona arrived in Naples and was presented to the world media as a Napoli player on 5 July 1984, where he was welcomed by 75,000 fans at his presentation at the Stadio San Paolo.
Sports writer David Goldblatt commented, “They [the fans] were convinced that the saviour had arrived.” A local newspaper stated that despite the lack of a “mayor, houses, schools, buses, employment and sanitation, none of this matters because we have Maradona”.
Prior to Maradona’s arrival, Italian football was dominated by teams from the north and centre of the country, such as A.C. Milan, Juventus, Inter Milan, and Roma, and no team in the south of the Italian Peninsula had ever won a league title. This was perhaps the perfect scenario for the Maradona and his working-class-sympathetic image, as he joined a once-great team that was facing relegation at the end of the 1983–84 Serie A season, in what was the toughest and most highly regarded football league in Europe.
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