Looking back at Diego Maradona's 1994 doping case
There is no denying that Diego Maradona is one of the greatest football players of all time and his achievements with Napoli and the Argentina national team are the stuff of legends. His innate talent, his charisma, and the way he could combine world-class dribbling with some of the best playmaking the football world has ever seen was simply breathtaking. And there is the story behind his career.
The context
It's important to point out that Maradona's issues with substances were already quite prominent long before the 1994 incident. In fact, during the 80s, the player's prime years, he spent most of the decade consuming cocaine, something that started when he signed with FC Barcelona in 1982.After Barcelona he joined Italian Napoli and his drug issues were mostly ignored in Italy as he was performing extremely well for Napoli and even helped giving the Italian league a commercial boost. However, after he helped eliminate Italy in the 1990 World Cup on their home soil, Maradona began to have issues with the mob and the people in that country, which led to him being banned in 1991 for 15 months due to drug consumption.
After a brief stint in Sevilla, Maradona would return to his country, Argentina, to sign for Newell's Old Boys but he was mostly out of shape and the vast majority of people thought he was going to retire soon. However, as the Argentina national team was struggling to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, he was called up in the latter stages of the process and helped Alfio "Coco" Basile's side qualify for the competition.
Maradona was 33 years old by the time the World Cup in the United States rolled around so most people knew this would probably be his last dance. Therefore, the player prepared extensively for the occasion, hiring a former bodybuilder, Daniel Cerrini, to help him out, although this would prove to be his doom in the end.
Happy Diego Maradona thinking back about the time when he was about to play in the World Cup 1994
The 1994 World Cup
By the time Maradona arrived at the 1994 World Cup, his mindset was clear: to get the most out of this occasion and help Argentina win the trophy once again. His leadership and legacy boosted the team's morale greatly, which was shown in their first two games of the group stage, defeating Greece 4-0 with a phenomenal Maradona performance and beating Nigeria through a 2-0 score.It seemed that the poor qualifying stages were in the past and Argentina, led by Maradona, were all of a sudden the favorites to win the competition. Except... things wouldn't go like that.
Cerrini, his personal trainer, was giving the Argentinian starlet a fat burner known as Ripped Fast, which was common currency back in those days in bodybuilding. This fat burner already had an element known as ephedrine, which is an illegal substance within football. However, the issue became even more notorious when Cerrini mistook the Ripped Fast pills for Ripped Fuel, which had a greater amount of ephedrine.
There is even an anecdote that, when Cerrini found out about the mistake he made, he ran to the Argentina national team's fitness coach, Fernando Signorini, and told him the truth. His reply? "Take a plane to the end of the world because Don Diego is arriving and you are going to have a bad time"
There have been several reports about this situation but the general consensus is that this news broke the Argentinian team, and especially Maradona himself. He eventually said that FIFA "cut off my legs" when doing an interview to address the situation, and the rest of the players' morale suffered a massive decline as they were quickly eliminated from the tournament in the round of 16 after a 2-3 defeat against Romania.
The aftermath
Maradona's doping case in the 1994 World Cup is the stuff of legends when it comes to football in Argentina. There have been a lot of conspiracy theories regarding why it happened, especially considering how much of a money-maker he was for the World Cup. There were even theories that this had to do with politics because of the Argentinian legend's friendship with then-Cuba president, Fidel Castro, which the United States government didn't like.Be that as it may, it was a very negative end for a player who had given so much to the Argentina national team. He kept playing, going back to his beloved Boca Juniors, but it could be argued that this was the last time Maradona truly wanted to compete at top level. The training regime he went through for that tournament was very notorious, even if it was undermined by the doping scandal.
This is one of the most interesting doping scandals in football because it has gained a life of its own, with a lot of people sharing their own perspectives on the matter. Alfio "Coco" Basile, Argentina's manager at the time, even went as far as saying that FIFA wanted Brazil to win the competition, which is saying a lot considering the tension between those two countries at the time.
Maradona is one of the greatest football players of all time and this doping scandal is always going to be the cause for a lot of debates when it comes to how and why it happened.