Diego Armando Maradona · Argentina
Photo : Public domain — unknown author (Wikimedia Commons)
Maradona’s case rests on a single tournament and a single club, and both are hard to argue with. In 1986 he carried an unremarkable Argentina side to the World Cup by scoring or assisting ten of their fourteen goals, including two against England four minutes apart that remain the most discussed pair of goals in the sport’s history — one punched in, one a run through half the pitch.
At Napoli he did something no player has repeated. He joined a club that had never won the Italian title, in a city Serie A treated as an embarrassment, and won two Scudetti and a UEFA Cup in seven seasons. Napoli have retired the number 10 and named the stadium after him; the fixation is not nostalgia, it is proportional to what happened.
The decline was as public as the peak. A failed drugs test in 1991, another at the 1994 World Cup, and years of ill health that ended with his death in 2020 at sixty. He was never a distant figure, and that is part of why the affection for him has outlasted the records.
Club career
| Years | Club | Apps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1976–1981 | Argentinos Juniors | 166 | 116 |
| 1981–1982 | Boca Juniors | 40 | 28 |
| 1982–1984 | Barcelona | 36 | 22 |
| 1984–1991 | Napoli | 188 | 81 |
| 1992–1993 | Sevilla | 26 | 5 |
| 1993–1994 | Newell’s Old Boys | 5 | |
| 1995–1997 | Boca Juniors | 30 | 7 |
| Total | 491 | 259 |
International career
| Years | Team | Caps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1977–1994 | Argentina | 91 | 34 |
Honours
Dashed = runner-up.
Related legends
Career figures compiled from public records. Competitive senior appearances only.