Joy lives in Naples – 06/05/2023 – Juca Kfouri

There is no place on Planeta Bola to be today other than the happy town of southern Italy.

Naples has returned to live the euphoria of more than three decades ago, when Diego Armando Maradona made it the capital of Italian football.

Milan, Rome, Turin, the pride of northern Bota bowed for the third time to Napoli’s power.

In the first two, in 1987 and 1990, the Argentine reigned, the most mediatic athlete of all time alongside Muhammad Ali.

Impossible to forget the 1990 World Cup semi-final, which pitted the Italian hosts against the Argentines.

The gods of stadiums wanted it to be exactly in the San Paolo stadium, today named after Maradona.

Then he appealed: “For 364 days of the year you are considered by the rest of Italy as foreigners in your own country and today you have to do what they want, support the Italian national team. days of the year”.

Don Diego wanted to convince the Neapolitans to support Argentina, and the president of the Italian federation asked them to support the Azzurra.

A huge banner appeared in the stands: “Diego in hearts, Italy in songs.”

The game ended 1-1, goalkeeper Sergio Goycochea took two penalties, and Argentina eliminated Italy.

Nearly 60,000 people left the stadium amidst a strange atmosphere, difficult to define. There was sadness, to be sure, but it wasn’t the sadness so often seen by those used to covering big decisions. In the resignation of the defeated, some satisfaction seemed to be hidden, a confused feeling, barely palpable, only guessed.

Once work was finished on the stunning Castelo do Ovo, built in 1128, which served as a press center, the restaurants around the fortress were already crowded by dawn. Nothing showed a depressive atmosphere in the World Cup host country.

Then, exactly at two in the morning, from different parts of the city, a noise of objects being thrown took over Naples, and little tricolor flags fell from the sky to the perplexity of bohemia.

“What are they celebrating?” asked the late Uruguayan journalist and sociologist Franklin Morales, author of the obligatory “Maracaná, los Laberintos del Carácter”, an extraordinary biography of the Uruguayan captain Obdulio Varela, drawn with the 1950 World Cup as a backdrop and published in Brazil, in e-book, by Companhia das Letras.

“What is being celebrated?” everyone wondered.

The clarification only came in the morning, when the City of Naples explained that a big fireworks display was scheduled as soon as the game ended with the Italian classification for the final.

Faced with the elimination, the fireworks were aborted, but not the launching of the flags, which was planned to be done discreetly, to avoid the trouble of removing one by one. Only nobody imagined that so many people were still on the streets after the defeat.

Now, if that morning the city was like that, the size of the envy for being away from the magnificent Castel dell’Ovo since last Thursday (4th), when the club became three-time champions, is immeasurable.

Maradona did not see Argentina’s third world championship last year nor the third Neapolitan one now.

Without him, however, neither would have been possible.

Long live Naples!

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