\u201cThere was only one way to stop Maradona: foul him. We didn\u2019t and got punished.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those were the words of Taffarel on \u2018The Cosmic Kite\u2019 jinking his way through Brazil to set-up Claudio Caniggia for the only goal in the last 16 at Italia \u2019\u06f9\u06f0\u066b In fairness, though Alemao, Maradona\u2019s Napoli team-mate, didn\u2019t try to go down the illegal avenue, Dunga\u2019s sliding challenge should have been enough to floor Maradona and Ricardo \u2018The Sherrif\u2019 Rocha tried to put him in handcuffs.<\/p>\n
The Sele\u00e7\u00e3o weren\u2019t solo lamenters. \u201cThe consensus was that we were going to kick him,\u201d recalled Terry Butcher of the England mindset entering a Mexico \u2019\u06f8\u06f6 quarter-final. \u201cThe problem was that he was very difficult to even bring down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several English lunges failed. \u2018The Goal of the Century\u2019 sent Argentina through.<\/p>\n
Graeme Souness, one of the greatest enforcers of all time who played against Maradona in Serie A, explained: \u201cThe first problem was getting near him. He was extremely quick and had a change of direction like no-one else.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if you did, he was really difficult to bring down. He was like a rugby player. I was much taller than him and a lot heavier, but Maradona was extremely powerful. You\u2019d bang into him but he wouldn\u2019t go down. He had this unique ability to ride challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet despite his incomparable capacity to avoid being impeded, and the fact that referees were far less protective of attacking players back then, Maradona extraordinarily holds not one, not two, but every World Cup record for the most-fouled player.<\/p>\n
It began in Barcelona \u2013 \u06f2\u06f5 days after he had made the city his new home. Claudio Gentile, whose surname means \u2018kind\u2019 in Italian, was anything but to \u2018El Pibe de Oro\u2019. The ruthless centre-back brought the mercurial playmaker down a staggering 23 times. Gentile was punished merely with a yellow card and, post-match, barked immortally: \u201cFootball is not for ballerinas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four years later in Mexico, Maradona, then in his devastating pomp, was fouled 53 times \u2013 fully 20 more than any other player in one edition. By the time he\u2019d waved goodbye to football\u2019s most prestigious platform, Maradona, who was mind-blowingly the most-fouled player at Spain \u2019\u06f8\u06f2, Mexico \u2019\u06f8\u06f6 and Italia \u2019\u06f9\u06f0, had won 152 free-kicks. Lionel Messi, who has made five more appearances, comes next on 75.<\/p>\n
To put that into context, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar drew an NBA record 4,657 fouls \u2013 a 1.7 per cent increase on his nearest challenger Karl Malone (4,578). Maradona drew a jaw-dropping 103 per cent increase on Messi.<\/p>\n
Debate continues over whether Pele, Maradona or Lionel Messi is the greatest player in World Cup history. There is zero discussion over which of them struck terror into opponents the most. There was only one Diego Armando Maradona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThere was only one way to stop Maradona: foul him. We didn\u2019t and got punished.\u201d Those were the words of Taffarel on \u2018The Cosmic Kite\u2019 jinking his way through Brazil to set-up Claudio Caniggia for the only goal in the last 16 at Italia \u2019\u06f9\u06f0\u066b In fairness, though Alemao, Maradona\u2019s Napoli team-mate, didn\u2019t try to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":961122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20966],"tags":[9648,27192],"class_list":["post-961121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fifa-news","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=961121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/961122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=961121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=961121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=961121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}