November 16 – Diego Maradona, one of football’s greatest ever strikers whose career on and off the field has nevertheless been blighted by controversy, is recovering after undergoing a gastric bypass in the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo over the weekend.
The 55-year-old former World Cup winner went through a similar operation around a decade ago and has battled ill health since his heyday in the 1980s.
“He is walking and in good spirits,” Carlos Felipe Chaux, one of the surgeons who treated the famous Argentinian, told reporters. Maradona is expected to remain in Venezuela for at least 12 more days.
Quite why he chose Venezuela for the operation rather than his native Argentina is unclear thought reports suggested it was because he has long been close to the country’s socialist government. Soon after the arrest of high-ranking FIFA officials earlier this year, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro laughably suggested that Maradona would be a good choice to replace Sepp Blatter as president.
Maradona captained Argentina in their 1986 World Cup triumph that included his infamous ‘Hand of God’ goal though eight years later, he was humiliatingly sent home during the 1994 finals for doping.
In 2010, he managed Argentina’s national team at the South Africa World Cup where his celebrity status was of more interest globally than his team who were routed by Germany in the quarterfinals.
Well before that, a lifestyle that included drugs, overeating and alcoholism had seen him put on huge amounts of weight and he nearly died in 2000 from a cocaine overdose.
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