Maradona put on a show for his brother’s team, scoring the winner straight from a corner and reviving the hand of God
Film by Adrijan Assoufi and words by James Kelly for COPA90
Blood is thicker than water. There can be no other explanation for why Diego Maradona ended up playing for
Toronto Italia in September 1996. Maradona had been scoring for
Argentina at the
World Cup two years earlier; now he was scoring the winning goal for a tiny club in Ontario.
A few decades later, when the Canadian filmmaker Adrijan Assoufi heard that one of the greatest footballers of all time had played on a pitch in his neighbourhood, he set about getting his hands on footage of the match. “This is a pitch that hosts house league games and practices,” says Adrijan. “It’s pretty run down; it only has one stand right now. As kids we’d change in those same dressing rooms where in the footage you can see him.”