NAPLES IS PREGNANT WITH DIEGO MARADONA

Naples isn't a normal place. Irrationally beautiful. Immediately daunting. Really, really welcoming. Neapolitans greet you with open arms, open mouths, and open hearts. It's a place kept just about in control by being out of control. A hot city in the hot shadow of a hot volcano. A big gob full of clams, Camorra, and Catholicism. Superstitions, scugnizzi, and scooters. And Maradona.

Naples is pregnant with Diego Maradona.

Diego was elevated to the status of the Gods. A social, psychological, and physical revolutionary—over 30 years on from Napoli's first scudetto, his aura is still slaloming through tight backstreets, outside sticky bars, and around the workshops of carpenters. Here, Maradona was way more than the best footballer in the world. God. Rebel. King. Animal. Saint. Sinner. Brother. Winner. And most importantly, he was one of them. Diego Maradona married the street with the sublime and absorbed Naples as Naples absorbed him.

So, with a Dictaphone, a bunch of phone numbers, and an Italian vocabulary more Steve Stone than Rosetta Stone, I went to have a chat with the psychologists, the lads playing cards, the journalists, and the merchandise sellers for whom Diego Armando Maradona is still a big part of the air they breathe.