One year after the departure of Diego Maradona, the pages of his legend are inexhaustible. Its history are eternal chapters of popular history, which cover all stages of the human being. With his way of being, with his way of playing, he marked a before and after in football and in people’s lives. “Those who intend to divide Diego’s life are those inflexible people in the face of the sin of others. On the other hand, I really like inmates like Maradona, who sometimes ‘sarpan’, who commit quite serious sins, but in the end they become popular heroes because of the way they achieve that kind of empathy so that we can both suffer and rejoice with them ”, explained Alejandro Dolina in a report.
Fernando Signorini was born 70 years ago in the city of Lincoln, he currently works as a physical trainer for the Chivas de México –or “footballer trainer”, as his description on twitter reads– and for a long time he accompanied Maradona. First as his personal trainer, from 1983 to 1994, and then he was a member of the coaching staff that formed the Diez, when he was in charge of the Argentine National Team in 2010. “El Prof”, or “El Ciego”, as Diego himself baptized him , keeps a thick anecdote at his side and part of that file, together with the help of Fernando Molina and Luciano Wernicke, decided to put it into the book Diego from within.
“The book was born because once Fernando Molina, Diego’s press collaborator in the 2010 World Cup, sharing a coffee and through a lot of anecdotes that I told, told me that I could not keep all that, that Diego belonged to everyone and that, if I had had the privilege of being with him, I had to make that reach people “, says Signorini from Guadalajara to Page 12. “When he told me that I had to write, I objected. I am not a professional writer, much less to write about something as important as Diego. And he told me about Luciano Wernicke. Nine months was the pregnancy of the baby we put Diego from within”.
Barcelona, Napoli, the Argentine National Team, all meeting and starting points, new adventures that Signorini went through alongside the greatest exponent of world football. “Our relationship was a lot like a two-handed avenue. I helped him a lot, but he also helped me. With his charisma and generosity, Diego turned an ordinary life like mine into a wonderful life. I am tall, blond, and with blue eyes, but I owe everything to a little black villager ”, he says in one of the passages of the book entitled Live is life.
– Who did you learn more from: Diego or Maradona?
–I learned from both of them and on different grounds. From Diego I learned the reality of the boys who come out of very humble socioeconomic conditions and who are very clear that through football they can make their dreams of changing the future of their family and themselves come true. I learned the inordinate love he had for the ball and for the Argentine jersey. From Maradona I learned everything the boys had to face in a football environment that became more and more ruthless. Above all, that linked to instrumentalization. The abuse that is made of the players and that nobody educates so that they can have critical thinking and those they try to tame so that they are always prisoners of a system that absorbs them, dominates them and imposes its will on them. But I also witnessed the way that Diego, first, and Maradona later, did everything possible to confront that power, risking not only much of their sports career but also of their health.
– What helped you the most in your career: that Menotti has agreed to allow you to witness the training sessions in Barcelona or the kick that Andoni Goikoetxea gave to Maradona?
-Both. If Menotti had not allowed me access to training, I would not have met Diego. And, on the other hand, if even knowing him from before, Goikoetxea had not given him that brutal kick, he would not have found arguments to tell me that he wanted me to stay by his side to help him from then on. On the other hand, the issue that he was going to need closer care, he had always thought about, and much more after that injury.
– Did Diego’s death take you by surprise?
“I knew that when it happened I wasn’t going to be surprised.” In any case, what surprised and amazed me the most was that he was still alive. That exaggerated life that he had passed, all those risks that he had faced, that in some way or another he had overcome, reached their limit. There is always a limit to everything. In fact, everything that is born is destined to die and that expiration date does not appear on any label when we are born. It definitely did not surprise me, I think I expected it to be otherwise, under other circumstances. It was very sad that Diego died like this.
– Some time before his death, did you have any contact with him?
“It had been a long time since I had contact with him.” Sometimes they called me from La Plata because they wanted to see me and I answered whoever called me that I was going, but to see him alone, without anyone else. After that they didn’t call me again.
– Why was a figure that was destined for emotion always condemned to explanation?
-The system is so hypocritical and perverse, especially with those who refuse to be lambs of the flock that power manages. Anyone who decides not to give in, not kneel, or be afraid of him, and even ridicule him, has to give more than one explanation. And although those of surely will not conform them, because they always want more.
–Why did you choose to study physical education?
– I liked other things: agronomy, philosophy, anthropology, I was undecided, but my father had died and the family situation was not ideal. It coincided with the fact that in Lincoln the career of National Physical Education Teacher was opened and having the place where it happened so close, with a friend we decided to sign up to see how far we could go. That was the reason, there was no planning or a vocation. That came later, as I discovered all the values that sport could transmit in the education of children.
– Was it to put aside the inheritance of the family business?
–I was lucky, in quotation marks, that my father died very young. Had she lived longer, she would have been what he wanted her to be without having the possibility and freedom to choose. As happens to many: they are professionals or have the same profession as their parents by family mandate, so as not to betray them. A lot of times I heard it said that a person broke his soul to have a study, a laboratory or an office, so that later his son decides to study whatever he wants. You always have to take the good out of the bad and the early death of my father, in a fortuitous event, helped me to choose the path I wanted to travel.
–Having known the two, and at extraordinary levels of performance, how do you get along with the insistence of the Maradona or Messi comparison?
– I remember that, in Italy, an Italian journalist asked me who was better: Maradona or Pelé. I replied that it depended. If Maradona had been Brazilian and I too and Pele Argentine, the answer would have been conditioned. I think there are many things that have to do with a sense of belonging and nationalism. I don’t compare the best ones, I enjoy them. It is like comparing two beautiful landscapes. It is filling the silence with words. What I can say is who I liked the most, but I keep it to myself. There are strictly football-related issues in which I see practically no differences. Yes in character, in that sense Diego would have done things very similar to the wonders of Lionel in a Barcelona with Busquets, Piqué, Iniesta, Xavi, Neymar, Pedro, Pujol. Which yes, due to a character difference, Lio could not have expressed himself at a maximum level in that Napoli team that was practically condemned to an inconsequential championship, to peel half the table. It was the arrival of Diego that boosted incredible levels. Mainly because of his courage, he did not give up or even defeated.
– In a report you said: “I would have preferred that the day he said” the ball is not stained “, in the sunshine, with a full gallery, that day he said goodbye. It would have been Diego” Why?
– I connect it with the previous thing: it did not deserve to die like that. He deserved a glorious death. He deserved to die like a bullfighter, in the middle of the ring, under the sun, in the sand. Like that novel by Ernest Hemingway (Death in the afternoon). Diego deserved such a death.
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