Worry beads passed through fingers.
Argentinians had come to pray for their fallen angel of football. Images of the man they have revered for decades were held aloft. Outside the hospital, they stood in vigil. For a while, Maradona was the bravest of the brave on a football field – and the best.. He became a despised and reviled figure in many quarters.But there are those who will always remember when Maradona took hold of the world and shook it down in pursuit of superb achievement. He was invited to Cuba by President Fidel Castro, talked about mending his ways and returning to football But they were sad dreams that he could never sustain.

But still he guided a poor Argentina side into the World Cup final against Germany in Rome. This time, the result was reversed, and Maradona was slipping into a life that seemed to his admirers and critics as a kind of hell.He was banned from the 1994 World Cup in America after a positive drugs test The rest was a terrible anarchy of the spirit. As he delivered Napoli’s first Italian league title in the late 80s, he also fell in with the local underworld. His drug habit started there, they say, and the rest of his football life was a way of the cross, sustained by painkillers and desperate lurches into the high life.In 1990, four years after his Mexican triumph, he was already the shell of a great man.

In the next round against Belgium, he produced a goal almost as remarkable and then, in the final, when the Germans applied one of their great players, Lothar Matth?, to the job of shadowing him, Maradona broke free to deliver the killing pass in a 3-2 victory.Heaven knows there were many lows to accompany that soaring triumph. But when he ran through the England team to score a goal of bewildering heart and brilliance, there was no doubt he was reaching the football heavens. In England, perhaps inevitably, we dwell on that moment when Maradona fisted the ball beyond Peter Shilton. Players such as Alfredo di Stefano, Franz Beckenbauer, George Best and Bobby Charlton will have their supporters in a list of all-time greats.But, none of them quite did what Maradona achieved in the second World Cup in the Azteca Stadium.