Director Asif Kapadia: ‘Diego and Maradona were two different people’ | Football

Football is a huge part of my life. I was 14 when Diego Maradona scored the two goals against England – the hand of God and the wonder goal. Despite the first goal, I always thought he was the best player in the world. I’ve always been a fan of outsiders, rebels.

Everyone wanted to be Maradona. He was the global phenomenon. The pope wanted to meet him. Fidel Castro would sit and listen to Diego tell a story.

In the mid-2000s when I was a film student I read a great book about Diego’s life. I remember seeing a picture of him looking obese. I wondered how he’d become so big and thought he would be a great subject for a film, and forgot about it.

A decade later the possibility of making the film came about. In 2016 my documentary Amy [about Amy Winehouse] won an Oscar. We discovered amazing previously unused footage of Maradona at his peak. We also found out that he was a fan of my film about Ayrton Senna.

The story of Maradona is almost summed up by my series of meetings with him in 2017-18 in Dubai, where he was coaching. Because it was Maradona, the producers insisted on coming out to meet him. And because it was Maradona, we thought this may be our only chance of interviewing him, so I took out the whole crew – usually I just do audio when I first meet somebody.

We had booked a studio for the interview, at huge expense. It never got used. When we got there his team said: “He’s not in a good frame today, try tomorrow.” OK. Next day it was: “He’s not feeling well today, come back tomorrow.” Had he had a bad night, been drinking, partying, was his health bad? We didn’t know.

We were waiting around for nearly a week in Dubai, seven of us, all the budget getting blown in the bar by the crew, and I’m getting frustrated.

In the end I said to his assistant: “Just give me five minutes with Diego to give him the present we’ve brought for him, a poster of the film we were going to make about him. I’m going home tomorrow, I can’t hang around waiting.” And he said: “No, no, no, no, he’ll be well, it could be the day after tomorrow.”

When I did eventually meet him at his house I learned he slept the whole day and stayed up all night watching football from Argentina. He came down for breakfast at 5pm, took our gift, said we were going to make a great film, shook hands, let us take a photo and went back to bed.

Maradona liked to keep people waiting. I think that’s a test he put people through: if you really want me, you’re going to have to wait. I went away and thought, well, I’ve made films about people I’ve never met. So for eight months we never made contact. We did research and conducted lots of interviews in Buenos Aires and Naples.

Eventually his people got in touch and said: “Don’t you want to interview Diego?” I said only if he really wants to talk to us. They said: “No, it will definitely happen.”

This time I went just with Lina, our archive producer, acting as translator. The first day [Maradona] didn’t turn up, but the second day we were invited to his home, had a cup of strong coffee and started talking. He was not particularly sharp. I think that was medication. He was watching Boca Juniors on TV as I interviewed him.

I tried to find the right way in. But I kept choosing the wrong subject. I mentioned Jorge Cyterszpiler, his friend since childhood and first agent who got him his first contract. A few weeks earlier Jorge had killed himself, and I thought Diego would say something nice about him, but he said: “I don’t want to talk about that guy – he stole from me.”

That was the cycle of his relationships with most people. You’re in there, you’re close to the God-like figure, then one day he’d say “you betrayed me” and would never talk to you again.

I thought, OK, try somebody else. What about Claudia, your ex-wife? “Don’t mention her.” It wasn’t going well. What about your parents? He softened and started telling me about his mum and dad, and how tough life was – there were eight of them living in a shack in the shantytown Villa Fiorito. His sisters would give up their food for him. He was the first son, so from day one he was spoilt rotten while the family made sacrifices for him.

Young Maradona was a one-off. He had this incredible body shape: tiny with huge thighs and a low centre of gravity that made him hard to knock over. He moved like a dancer. He was smart – not educated but with a natural intelligence. He was charismatic, funny. Everyone loved him, and he loved life.

The one thing he, Senna and Amy have in common is that they were all child stars. He was famous in Argentina before he had any kind of contract. He’d come on the pitch as a child at half-time to do kick-ups for 15 minutes and the ball would never go down. Then he went to Barcelona and Naples, humiliated England four years after the Falklands war, won the World Cup and became a god. He was just on another level.

By the time I met him he was a very different person to the person I was making a film about. But I did get glimpses of that sharpness and humour. The most memorable moment for me was a silly one. I was doing the sound recording myself, and he was watching football while I was interviewing him.

The only way I could make it work was to sit next to the mic, but I didn’t want to block the TV, so I sat on the floor with my head next to the microphone. I found myself thinking I’m sat at the feet of Diego Maradona. He was wearing shorts – as he always did – and I’m looking at those massive legs, thinking that’s Diego Maradona’s left foot.

I’ve met a lot of stars over the years, but I’ve never had the urge to touch anyone before. I had this mad urge to touch his foot. So for my next question I said: “Is this the ankle that [Andoni] Goikoetxea broke?” And as I asked him, I grabbed his ankle.

Maradona didn’t like being touched, and he pushed me away, and I knocked the microphone over. It was just this weird thing of being in the presence of someone I had to touch. He had a presence, something, and I could not help myself. Even though I knew it was really unprofessional, I just had to do it.

Maradona was brilliant at deflecting questions. You’d ask about the Camorra or refusing to recognise his son, and he’d tell you a story about Sepp Blatter. When it got to the third interview, I knew I needed answers. I said I don’t want to know about Blatter and Fifa corruption, I’m asking you why you did not recognise your son. He just looked at me and said: “You’ve got a nerve, who do you think you are? Nobody dares talk to me like that.”

He was angry. When he turned serious you didn’t want to mess with that Diego. There was a long pause, and then he said: “For that, I respect you. Most people would never have the nerve to ask these questions to my face, they say them to my back.”

I took a deep breath, and asked the question again, and of course he talked about something else. Eventually we get some kind of answer, but that was the last interview I ever did with him.

Next he took a job in Belarus, then he was in Sinaloa, Mexico, where lots of drug cartels were. He eventually went back to Argentina, and I did go to show him the film but by then I couldn’t get near to him.

The film premiered in Cannes, and everybody wanted him to come. But his people said he wasn’t in a good way. A poster was made with the subtitle Rebel, Hero, Hustler, God. He didn’t like “hustler ”– he interpreted it as thief – and said: “This film is a lie, they’ve cheated me, I’m never going to watch it, I trusted them and they betrayed me.”

My feelings about Maradona are complex. With Amy and Senna, I fell in love with them while making the films. I loved the young guy who arrived at Naples, and loved him till the World Cup win in 1986. That’s the turning point. By the time you see him getting off the plane in Argentina clutching the World Cup, everyone wants a piece of him. And the look on his face – he’s terrified, he hasn’t got a clue what’s to come.

From then on, life changed for ever. And that’s when he starts to lie about his kid Diego Jr. He became this other person, covering up one lie with another. He got into cocaine, addictions took over. It’s hard to be comfortable with what he became.

His former personal trainer Fernando Signorini put it beautifully. He said Diego and Maradona were two different people – Diego was the wonderful boy with human insecurities; Maradona was the character he had to come up with in order to face the demands of the football business and the media.

Signorini said he would travel the world for Diego but wouldn’t want to take a step with Maradona. I thought I could make a movie from that; that’s what it’s about. There were a couple of moments when I felt I was in the presence of the younger Diego – when he was smiling, charming and smart, funny and happy.

I’m glad he did go back to Argentina in the end to coach and he had a final “tour”. He got to go to every stadium, and fans got to show how much they loved him, what he meant to them.

I’m not sure how much coaching he did, but he did get his last dance with the Argentinians.