SERIE A - Napoli to host intense commemoration ceremony for Maradona

26.11.2021 22:30 of D.B. TransferMarketWeb   see readings
SERIE A -  Napoli to host intense commemoration ceremony for Maradona
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On Sunday, when Napoli hosts Lazio, they will pay tribute to Diego Maradona in the hopes of putting two painful and costly defeats behind them.

On the anniversary of Maradona's death on Thursday, the football world paid tribute to him, but Napoli is using this weekend's match to allow Neapolitans to say their final goodbyes at the place where their hero felt most at ease.

Napoli fans were advised to be at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona almost three hours early on Thursday so they could be in the stands for an "intense" memorial event honoring the man who guided the club to their only two Serie A titles and the 1989 UEFA Cup.

Despite his grisly fall from grace at the end of his turbulent seven years in southern Italy, a failed drugs test and details of a sordid private life dogging him as he fled back to Buenos Aires in 1991, Maradona remains a God-like figure in Naples, where children are still named Diego in his honor and murals of the Argentine can be found all over the city.

"Naples was always there for dad, and he was always there for Naples," says his son Diego Maradona Junior in a recent Sky Italia documentary.

"You see a sticker in a car, or a mural, or a kid on the street who has a top with Maradona written on the back, and that fills me with pride because he gave the people of my city unending joy."