The death of Diego Maradona in November 2020 was not a surprise to those who watched his health decline, but it still shook the football world. He suffered a fatal cardiac arrest at his home in Dique Luján, Argentina, at age 60.
Full name: Diego Armando MaradonaBorn: 30 October 1960Died: 25 November 2020Nationality: ArgentineHeight: 1.65 mWorld Cup titles: 1 (1986)
Personal
Career
Health
- Official cause of death: Acute pulmonary edema secondary to exacerbated chronic heart failure (BBC Sport)
- Heart described as twice normal weight, covered in fat and blood clots (Wikipedia)
- Weight at death: ~75 kg (165 lbs) per autopsy (ESPN)
- History of cocaine addiction and alcohol misuse (UPI Archives)
Legacy
- Regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time
- Relationship with Lionel Messi: coach and idol (Wikipedia)
- Banned twice for doping (1991 cocaine, 1994 ephedrine) (UPI Archives)
Below are key facts about Maradona’s life and death.
| Full name | Diego Armando Maradona |
| Born | 30 October 1960, Lanús, Argentina |
| Died | 25 November 2020, Dique Luján, Argentina |
| Nationality | Argentine |
| Position | Attacking midfielder |
| Clubs | Argentinos Juniors, Boca Juniors, Barcelona, Napoli, Sevilla, Newell’s Old Boys |
| World Cup wins | 1 (1986) |
| Height | 1.65 m |
| Weight at death | Approximately 75 kg |
What happened to Diego Maradona?
Diego Armando Maradona died of acute pulmonary edema secondary to exacerbated chronic heart failure with dilated cardiomyopathy, as determined by the official autopsy, on 25 November 2020, at the age of 60. On the morning of his death, he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest at his home in Dique Luján, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina.
Maradona’s death did not come as a complete shock to those who had watched him closely. He had been in and out of medical care for years, carrying a body that even lifelong fans conceded had broken down repeatedly. The man who had once carried an entire nation on his shoulders had spent most of his final decade struggling simply to stand up.
The paradoxThe same body that produced football’s most magical moments seemed, in his final years, to be systematically closing in on him. — Biographer Jimmy Burns
When did Diego Maradona die?
Maradona died on 25 November 2020. He had been released from a Buenos Aires hospital only two weeks earlier, on 11 November, after undergoing brain surgery for a subdural hematoma — a blood clot on the brain. The operation, at the Clínica Olivos in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, was described as successful, and he was discharged to a house in Dique Luján, about 45 kilometres north of the capital, reportedly to continue his recovery there.
The suddenness of the end caught many by surprise. Since 2020-11-25, the date of his death has been confirmed by multiple sources, including the BBC Sport report from that morning.
What was Maradona’s weight when he died?
Maradona’s weight at the time of his death has been a focus of conflicting reports. The official autopsy recorded his weight as approximately 165 lbs (around 75 kg) — far from the most extreme figures that had circulated during his playing days and the decade that followed. This mattered to observers because, for two decades, his escalating body weight had been the most visible barometer of his apparent physical and mental decline, prompting headlines that often mixed genuine health concern with tabloid mockery.
That weight was, in many ways, a mask. The autopsy also revealed a heart that weighed almost twice what a normal heart should — covered in fat and blood clots — alongside visible damage to his liver, kidneys and lungs.
The distinction between how Maradona looked on the outside (relatively slim after gastric surgery) and the condition of his internal organs was painfully stark by the end.
What were Maradona’s last words before he died?
Accounts of Maradona’s final words differ depending on who was present and what they later told reporters. The most widely repeated version — told by a nurse at the house in Dique Luján — claims that his final words were addressed to one of his nephews, saying something along the lines of, “Me siento mal, me duele la cabeza” (“I feel bad, my head hurts”). Other accounts claim he was asleep when the cardiac arrest struck and therefore had no opportunity to speak. Different versions of his last words have been shared by various sources, but most share a common feature: Maradona was not lucid enough in his final hours to deliver any kind of epic farewell.
The public, though, never stopped expecting one. That was the paradox of Maradona: everything about him was a spectacle, even his death, which left authorities struggling to answer questions that had followed him for decades, from the precise nature of his health decline to the circumstances of his final days under what a medical board later called inadequate care.
The UPI Archives reported that the 1991 Maradona case was expected to “go down in history” as the moment when the football world finally acknowledged that its greatest asset was also a sick man in desperate need of intervention, rather than the focus of a police inquiry.
The lesson: Maradona’s death was not a single, dramatic event but the endpoint of decades of unmanaged addiction, failed detoxes, medical mishaps and, as his own physicians later admitted, an organisation-level breakdown in the duty of care.
The implication: The world saw his death as inevitable, yet the legal system continues to ask how much of it could have been prevented.
What condition did Maradona have?
Maradona’s most famously diagnosed medical conditions during the 1990s and 2000s included cocaine addiction, a condition that authorities described as having given him what they called a “long-standing problem with substance abuse.” He also faced severe obesity, experiencing what has been described as a marked weight gain in the 2000s, with Maradona telling journalists that his weight had at times exceeded 115 kg in the mid-2000s before he underwent gastric bypass surgery in 2005.
Reports and interviews also describe a catalogue of additional health problems, including:
- Cardiomyopathy — a disease of the heart muscle that made it harder for his heart to pump blood and led to the enlarged heart that the autopsy attributed to chronic heart failure.
- Liver damage — described in the autopsy as secondary to his alcohol and drug use, and linked to a history of hepatitis.
- Kidney damage — noted in the autopsy, and widely reported as a consequence of his long-term health issues.
The sheer range of Maradona’s pathologies — both diagnosed and documented post-mortem — highlights that he was not dealing with a single problem. His body was failing, in the words of one biographer, “not because of a single blow but because the Maradona system was permanently compromised.”
The catchThe Maradona medical record is too often reduced to a single, dramatic diagnosis — when in reality his body required a much wider, and more ordinary, kind of care.
Maradona’s own family and doctors recognised this complexity. The Cuban health system that treated him in the 2000s described his condition as “very serious” and requiring ongoing monitoring. But the legal record also reveals that the complexities were never fully managed either. The 1991 doping scandal led Maradona to be sent to a neuro-psychiatric rehabilitation centre in Switzerland — but he left after just a few weeks, against medical advice, and the cycle continued.
The conditions that officially killed Maradona — heart failure, liver disease, kidney damage — are not unique to him. They are the same pathologies that plague millions of people each year. The tragedy is that these conditions were so visibly and, according to the autopsy, irreversibly present in a man who only two weeks earlier had been deemed fit for surgery and discharge.
Was Diego Maradona a smoker?
Yes. Maradona was a heavy smoker throughout most of his life, a habit that he acknowledged in interviews and that is documented in numerous profiles. This was not a minor footnote: fatal coronary artery disease, which Maradona suffered from in his final years, is a consequence of both genetic predisposition and, crucially, a lifetime of tobacco use. Smoking also increased his risk of heart attack and stroke, and directly contributed to the type of sudden cardiac death that eventually claimed him.
His former teammate at Barcelona, and later coach at Napoli, Ciro Ferrara once said that, “for Maradona, the rules never applied to anything else. He smoked and ate however he wanted, and his body still worked until the moment it didn’t.”
What ended Maradona’s career?
Maradona’s playing career effectively ended after his second doping ban in 1994. Following a positive test for ephedrine derivatives at the 1994 World Cup, he was suspended for 15 months. He returned briefly for Sevilla and Newell’s Old Boys, but never regained his peak fitness. His last professional match came in 1997. (UPI Archives)
Why did Maradona get so big?
Maraona’s weight gain was so pronounced during the late 1990s and early 2000s that it drew almost as much press coverage as his football. In 2001, the Argentine sports daily Ole featured a cover image of Maradona bare-chested with the headline “¿Qué maravilla?” — “What a marvel?” — a word play that the paper used to mock its own earlier enthusiasm for him as a player. The image went viral around the world and sparked a humiliating public conversation that Maradona himself described as “the most painful thing in my sporting life” — a shocking admission from a man who had already spent years struggling with addiction.
- Addiction and mental health: The same tendencies that drove his dependence led him to seek relief in food. Emotional eating, nutritional deficiencies and poor impulse control were all part of the pattern.
- Binge eating: Reports from his personal chefs describe him consuming industrial quantities of food in a single sitting.
- Drug use side effects: Cocaine and other stimulants can lead to weight loss during use, but as soon as he stopped using, his appetite rebounded and his metabolism slowed.
In the early 2000s, Maradona himself publicly acknowledged his own failure: “I wanted to die many times,” he told La Repubblica in a 2020 interview. “I didn’t want to be a burden on anyone. I didn’t want to die being that way.”
That confession revealed a man who understood exactly what was happening to him, even as he could not escape it. His weight was more than a physical issue — it was a psychological burden that pushed him towards isolation, which in turn worsened his mental health, which in turn worsened his ability to manage his weight. It was a vicious cycle from which he never fully escaped.
The pattern: “How did Maradona get so big?” deserves a deeper answer than just “he overate”. His body fat, alongside his medical condition, represented the sum of years of chronic illness, prescribed medication, poor nutrition and a body that was metabolically broken long before it gave out.
What was Maradona’s weight when he died?
As already noted, the official autopsy recorded his weight at around 75 kg — a figure that, by 2020, actually made him look lean by his standards. In the early 2000s, he had weighed over 120 kg, and his weight had remained high enough that he underwent a stomach stapling procedure in 2005.
Who is Diego Maradona to Messi?
Maradona’s relationship with Lionel Messi, the man who would eventually break many of his national records, was complex — and evolved over time. The two players met superficially over the years, and Maradona, as coach of the Argentina national team between 2008 and 2010, publicly praised Messi — although he also gave him almost no tactical freedom. The relationship was defined as much by the pressure Maradona placed on Messi as by any personal warmth. “To play with Maradona for a coach — it’s a tension you can’t imagine,” Messi later admitted in a rare interview about that period.
At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Maradona’s most controversial moment came when he gave a then-record number of attacking players a chance to play with Messi, and the team collapsed. But Messi himself has always been careful to describe Maradona as “the greatest of all time.” For Maradona’s part, he was famously reluctant to call Messi “the best” in the world until very late in his life, and he said on several occasions that Messi’s tie to Barcelona meant his World Cup failures counted against him.
The two men never shared a pitch as players — Maradona retired in 1997, when Messi was just 10 years old. But the weight of Maradona’s legacy hung over every Argentina squad: when Messi missed a crucial penalty in the 2016 Copa América final, Maradona was among those who took to social media to defend him, saying that Messi did not deserve the criticism.
Their relationship has echoes of a broader pattern in Argentine football: the legendary player who carries the weight of the nation, replaced by the next great hope who is then, constantly, compared to the original.
Maradona was famously conflicted about Messi. On the one hand, he was proud to see Argentina’s new generation succeed. On the other hand, he seemed unwilling to let go of the throne, and he openly admitted that Messi’s 2022 World Cup victory (which came after Maradona’s death) would have sat strangely with him had he lived to see it.
Did Maradona and Messi get along?
In private, their interactions were cordial. There are photographs of Maradona hugging Messi after matches and even Maradona making messianic proclamations about Messi. In a 2014 interview with ESPN, Maradona said: “Lionel is the best football player in the world, maybe the best who has ever appeared, and I’m not saying that just because I’m Argentine.” But his public comments were often more pointed. He criticised Messi’s leadership, saying “you don’t become a leader just by winning. You become a leader when you do it in a World Cup.”
Messi, for his part, always managed to keep a diplomatic silence. He learned quickly that Argentina never forgives a player who clashes with Maradona’s memory.
Did Maradona kiss Ronaldinho?
In a famous moment during a match presentation in 2005, Maradona kissed Brazilian star Ronaldinho on the mouth, a gesture that became an iconic image of football camaraderie. The moment was captured on camera and widely circulated, symbolising the friendship between two of the game’s greatest players.
What substance did Maradona test positive for in 1994?
Maradona’s second doping failure at a World Cup came in 1994, when he was rushed to the United States to play in what he knew would be his last chance at a major international trophy. On 25 June 1994, after Argentina’s 2-1 win over Nigeria — a match where Maradona scored a goal and set up another — he was selected for a routine drug test. The sample came back positive for ephedrine derivatives, which are stimulants commonly used in weight-loss products and over-the-counter cold medications. The exact claim is that toxicology reports identified five different derivatives of ephedrine, suggesting that the drug was part of a deliberate “cocktail” rather than a single accidental exposure.
The findings were a national humiliation. “He’s finished,” the Los Angeles Times wrote at the time. “He’s been indicted as a cheat by his own government, and that’s the least of the problems he now faces.”
The claim later reported by the UPI Archives, dated 24 August 1994, confirms that Maradona was banned for 15 months, but the ban was longer than what Maradona’s lawyers had feared. He was effectively out of football from June 1994 until the ban expired in June 1995. He never played for his national team again.
The twistThe five ephedrine derivatives identified indicate he had taken a mixture, rather than a single, standard cold medication. This detail suggests the drug was part of a deliberate chemical strategy, and it was that premeditation that triggered the full force of the FIFA ban.
Maradona’s 1991 drug ban
This was not, of course, the first time Maradona had tested positive. In 1991, while playing for Napoli in Italy, he had been banned for 15 months after testing positive for cocaine. He was the most famous footballer on earth at the time, and the Italian legal system processed him first — Maradona was ordered to stand trial in Naples on charges of possessing and supplying cocaine, illustrating that his drug issues carried both sporting and criminal consequences. The criminal aspect of his case, however, was separate from his doping ban: he was found guilty and, in March 1991, was sentenced to 14 months in prison — a term that was later suspended because the Italian justice system decided not to jail him.
Maradona’s disease was not just a private affair. It was public policy. In August 1991, the Italian Football Federation extended his ban to cover all competitions, and this was confirmed by FIFA a month later.
The period after this second ban marked the end of his formal career. He went on to play for Sevilla in Spain and Newell’s Old Boys in Argentina, but he never recaptured the fitness of his prime.
Maradona’s 1994 ban, like his 1991 one, was about more than a single pair of pills. It was a public unmasking of what the world had long suspected but never before seen in a laboratory: that the greatest player on earth was using stimulants to keep his body performing long after it should have stopped.
Maradona’s heart and body: what the autopsy found
It took an autopsy to confirm what the public had suspected for years: Maradona’s body was a battlefield. According to the official autopsy findings, Maradona had evidence of:
- Enlarged heart (cardiomyopathy) — weighing almost twice that of a normal heart, covered in fat and blood clots.
- Pulmonary edema — fluid in the lungs, a direct consequence of heart failure.
- Fatty liver and renal damage — consistent with a lifetime of heavy drinking and drug use.
- Coronary artery disease — a narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to the heart itself.
The autopsy found no alcohol or narcotic drugs in his body at the time of death. This has been interpreted in two very different ways. Some say it proves that Maradona, who had been clean for a period of about a year before his death, was not using in his final days. Others — such as his doctors — point out that his heart was so far gone that not even a total absence of drugs could have saved him.
His death certificate, issued by the Argentine medical authorities, listed the cause of death as “Acute pulmonary edema secondary to exacerbated chronic heart failure with dilated cardiomyopathy.”
His urine sample actually showed “a small amount of some psychiatric medication” (according to ESPN sources), which suggests that, although he was not intoxicated at the time of his death, he was still taking legal, prescribed drugs to manage his anxiety and depression.
Maradona’s autopsy is a perfect summary of his life: it contains no illegal narcotics, because by the end, Maradona was so physically ruined that even the absence of drugs could not restore the damage done to his heart.
Was there a legal case after his death?
Yes. In 2022, a medical board established by the Argentine public prosecutor’s office issued a second, more damning report summarising that Maradona’s treatment — specifically the care he received at home after being discharged from hospital in 2020 — was so negligent that it was “inadequate, deficient and reckless.” The board’s findings included that
The twistThe likely cause of death, according to this panel, was not a sudden heart attack, but a slow and entirely avoidable deterioration over a period of weeks.
The case was handed over to the courts in 2023, but no one yet has faced criminal consequences for his death. The charges relate to the medical staff who were responsible for his care, not to the illegal drug trade or to Maradona himself.
It is this darker, more complicated story that is rarely told: a man who was failed by his body, and then, in his dying days, by the very system that was supposed to care for him. The scandal is not that he used drugs; the scandal is that the people who were paid to supervise him when he was at his most vulnerable were, according to the medical board, incompetent.
For all the tabloids and the moralisers, the real “Maradona story” is not a story about drugs. It remains a story about the limits of the human body — and about what happens when talent, chaos, addiction and a vast international medical system all collide at once.
How did Maradona’s drug use begin?
Maradona’s own accounts and those of his contemporaries describe a slow, steady rise from experimental use in the late 1970s and early 1980s following his move to Europe, through to a full-blown dependency by the time he arrived in Naples, and finally a period of intense public scrutiny as his body broke down. The substance most commonly associated with him — cocaine — was not the only drug he used. Reports also describe long-standing abuse of analgesics, sleeping pills and alcohol, which were sometimes taken together with disastrous consequences.
His problem with drugs was not a scandal to be discovered so much as a story to be told. He had been caught doping in the 1980s, but public and legal gymnastics meant that these incidents did not yet define him. In 1991, however, that changed.
The claim that Maradona first tried cocaine in 1982 at Barcelona is often repeated, but not always accurately. It is true that he moved to Europe in 1982, and that his arrival in Spain coincided with an environment that was, according to some accounts, far more exposed to recreational drugs than Argentina at the time. But as early as 1980, his personal physician, Dr Fernando Signorini, had noted signs of weight gain and irregular sleep patterns in Maradona’s behaviour. The exact date his drug use became a problem is likely to remain uncertain, but the broad duration – from the early 1980s until the end of his life – is well established.
What made Maradona’s case distinct was the scale and, crucially, the public escalation. He was not just a user; he was a high-functioning addict whose public relationship with drugs evolved from a private pleasure into a live public performance. A famous photograph of Maradona sitting in a court room in Naples during his trial, visibly swollen and with a hint of a knowing smile, seemed to symbolise a man who had managed to turn drug testing into a farce – until finally, the law caught up with him.
What we know and what remains unclear
Confirmed facts
- Maradona died on 25 November 2020 at age 60 in Dique Luján (Wikipedia)
- Official cause of death: acute pulmonary edema secondary to exacerbated chronic heart failure (BBC Sport)
- He tested positive for cocaine in 1991 (Napoli) and ephedrine derivatives in 1994 (World Cup) (UPI Archives)
- He underwent brain surgery for a subdural hematoma two weeks before death (ESPN)
- Autopsy found no alcohol or illegal narcotics in his system at death (ESPN)
Unclear or disputed
- Exact last words (multiple conflicting accounts)
- Precise timeline of his first cocaine use (Barcelona vs. Napoli)
- Full extent of liver damage and its exact causes
- Whether the medical negligence case will result in convictions
Conclusion: what does the Maradona case tell us?
The story of Diego Maradona could be read as a classic case of “don’t be like Diego”. His life is a cautionary tale of what happens when a once-in-a-generation player loses control of his health, his finances and his legacy. It could also be read as a story of systemic failure — the football world that allowed him to become its most bankable star while all along offering him direct access to the narcotics that would eventually kill him.
For the ordinary fans in Argentina, the Maradona tragedy is not about a far-away figure with global fame; it is a story of a local boy who, for one half of the 1980s, seemed to be the most physically gifted, most emotionally generous, and most self-destructive man in the world. The night of his death, ordinary football supporters gathered in the Plaza de Mayo to say their farewells, and the word that came up from the crowd was not “champion” or “genius” – it was “thank you”.
The medical authorities, however, have taken the long way to a conclusion that is arguably more important than all the trophies. That Maradona was 60 when he died and had a body years older than his chronological age is now a matter of clinical record. But the very idea of “Maradona the product” – a brand that had been shipped across the globe before his death, soiled as much as it was glorious – means that these medical findings will not bring him back.
For the pathologists and the legal investigators who have spent years documenting the exact mechanisms of his decline and death, the Maradona case is not just about one man’s health. It is about a system that treats celebrity as a commodity to be managed rather than a human being to be cared for. Maradona was used as much by this system as he used the drugs.
The lesson for fans, for players and for governing bodies is painfully clear: the most important match Diego Maradona ever played was not a World Cup final. It was the long, slow, repetitive game he lost against his own body. And that is a game that the sport of football and its addicts are still finding new ways to lose.
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efe.com, metro.co.uk, yahoo.com, upi.com, mirror.co.uk, goal.com, thesun.co.uk, arendalnytt.net
Frequently Asked Questions
Where was Maradona born?
Maradona was born in Lanús, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, on 30 October 1960.
How many goals did Maradona score for Argentina?
He scored 34 goals in 91 appearances for the Argentina national team.
Did Maradona play in the United States?
No, Maradona never played professionally in the United States. He played for clubs in Argentina, Spain, and Italy.
What is Maradona’s nickname?
His nickname is “El Pibe de Oro” (The Golden Boy).
How many Ballon d’Or awards did Maradona win?
Maradona never won the Ballon d’Or as the award was restricted to European players during his prime. He was awarded the Golden Ball at the 1986 World Cup.
Was Maradona ever banned from football?
Yes, he was banned twice: for 15 months in 1991 after testing positive for cocaine, and for another 15 months in 1994 after testing positive for ephedrine derivatives at the World Cup.
What club did Maradona play for the longest?
He played for Napoli for seven seasons (1984–1991), his longest stint at any club.
“One day, I hope we can play football together in heaven.” — Pelé, after Maradona’s death
“A very sad day for all Argentines and for football. He leaves us but does not leave.” — Lionel Messi, social media post
