*A dramatized account inspired by real events. Some details may vary depending on the source.*
September 24, 1983. Camp Nou. 60th minute.
Diego Armando Maradona receives the ball in midfield. He does what he always does: he controls it, turns, looks for space. He doesn’t see what’s coming.
Andoni Goikoetxea runs towards him from behind. He doesn’t run towards the ball; he runs towards Diego, towards his left ankle, the magic foot. Goikoetxea leaps, studs up, like an axe falling on a log. The impact is heard throughout the stadium. 90,000 people in silence.
Diego falls, rolls, clutches his ankle with both hands, and screams. Not the scream of a player trying to get a foul; a scream of animal pain that erupts from the depths of his being. The medics rush over. His teammates rush over. Goikoetxea doesn’t. He stands five meters away, arms hanging limp, face expressionless. He watches Diego writhe on the ground like someone witnessing the inevitable.
Diego raises his head, sees the Basque man, and searches his face for something: regret, concern, something human. He finds nothing, only satisfaction.
The next day, Goikoetxea is going to give an interview. They’re going to ask him about the kick. He’s going to say three words that Diego will never forget:
—He deserved it.
To understand that kick, you have to understand who Diego Maradona was in September 1983. A desperate man.
Diego arrived in Barcelona in the summer of 1982. The most expensive signing in the history of world football: 12 million. He was 21 years old. He came from Argentina, where he was already a god. He came from the World Cup in Spain, where he had failed: a red card against Brazil, Argentina eliminated, the world waiting for his coronation and him returning with his head down.
Barcelona bought him to win everything, to crush Real Madrid. But from day one, everything went wrong. Diego got sick. Hepatitis. Weeks in the hospital while the team played without him. When he returned, his body wouldn’t respond. Barcelona finished fourth, losing the Copa del Rey final against Real Madrid.
The Barcelona fans started murmuring: “12 million for this…”. Diego felt it in training, in matches, on the streets of Barcelona. Looks that were once admiring were now doubtful. He needed to explode. He needed to prove he was worth every penny. He needed to silence all those who were already writing his obituary.
The 1983-84 season was his chance, his last chance in Barcelona. He arrived prepared, motivated, hungry. The hope lasted four games.
Andoni Goikoetxea. 1.83 meters tall, 82 kilos of Basque muscle, legs like oak trunks. They called him “The Butcher of Bilbao.” It wasn’t an ironic nickname, it was a description. He played for Athletic with a simple philosophy: “The opponent doesn’t get through, and if they do, they don’t get through whole.”
Goikoetxea didn’t hate Diego. It wasn’t personal; he probably didn’t even think of him as a person. He saw him as a problem. A foreign striker who came to show off, to dribble, to humiliate defenders. He had to be brought down a peg. He had to be taught that Spain wasn’t Argentina. And Goikoetxea was the perfect teacher.
September 24, 1983. Camp Nou, Barcelona vs. Athletic Bilbao. Matchday 4 of the league. 90,000 people. Everyone wanted to see Diego, to see if this season would be different.
Diego steps onto the pitch, feels the pressure, accepts it, needs it. Today he has to prove something. Not tomorrow, today. The match starts from the first minute. Diego notices something. Every time he touches the ball, a stud to the ankle, an elbow to the ribs, a hand that grabs. The Athletic players mark him hard, very hard, always on the edge.
Diego endures it, he’s used to it, it’s the price of being the best.
15th minute. Diego gets the ball, two defenders on him, he nutmegs the first, dribbles past the second, shoots… it hits the post. The Camp Nou erupts in applause. That’s what they came to see.
45th minute, first half, 0-0. Twelve fouls on Diego. No cards for Athletic. In the locker room, Menotti approaches.
-How are you?
-GOOD.
—Do you want me to take you out?
Diego looks at him as if he had spoken to him in another language.
—I’ll tear it up in the second half.
He doesn’t know it won’t last 15 minutes.
Minute 60. Diego receives the ball in midfield. Two options: a quick back pass or a turn for a one-on-one. Diego always chooses the one-on-one. He turns. He sees a shadow approaching. Instinct tells him to raise his leg. He’s too late.
Goikoetxea comes at full speed. Blocks straight at him. It’s not a tackle to steal the ball, it’s an execution. The impact is brutal. Ligaments torn apart. Fibula fractured. The ankle that held all of Diego’s magic, destroyed in a fraction of a second.
Diego falls. The sound that comes from his mouth is inhuman. Camp Nou falls silent. 90,000 people hold their breath. Goikoetxea stands still, watches Diego writhe, doesn’t approach, doesn’t ask if he’s okay. The referee shows him a red card. Goikoetxea walks slowly toward the tunnel, unhurried, without looking back.
Diego raises his head and sees the Basque man’s back receding. He doesn’t turn around. Diego closes his eyes. The pain is unbearable, but there’s something worse than the pain. The question that pops into his head: “Is it over?”
Hospital, x-rays, doctors with long faces. The diagnosis is brutal: torn ligaments, fractured fibula. Three months minimum, no guarantees.
Diego is in bed. His ankle is immobilized. The painkillers are making him dizzy. His agent is sitting beside him. He’s been silent for hours. Diego speaks first.
—He did it on purpose.
It’s not a question.
—I saw his face. He was satisfied.
Silence.
—He wanted to break me… and he broke me.
Diego closes his eyes. A tear falls down the side of his face. It’s not from pain, it’s from anger.
The next day, Goikoetxea gives an interview. He is asked about the kick, whether it was intentional, and if he regrets it. Goikoetxea doesn’t hesitate.
—I don’t regret anything. Maradona thinks he can come to Spain and do whatever he wants, that he can dribble past everyone and make us look like clowns.
Break.
—Someone had to stop him.
Longer pause.
—He deserved it.
Three words. “He deserved it.” Diego reads them in the newspaper that morning. He reads them twice. He feels something he’s never felt before. It’s not sadness, it’s not fear; it’s something darker, colder. He keeps the newspaper, he doesn’t throw it away; he keeps it in that place in his memory that he never forgets, that he never forgives.
The recovery is brutal. Three months without touching a ball, daily rehabilitation, exercises to the point of exhaustion, constant pain. Diego spends hours staring at the ceiling, thinking: “I was 23 years old, ready to explode, and a man decided against it. It’s over. That’s how it all ends.”
The ankle is slowly improving, but it will never be the same. Before the kick, Diego would turn without thinking. His ankle responded automatically; it was part of his body, like his eyes or hands. Afterward, there’s always a moment of hesitation, a split second where the ankle doesn’t respond the same way, where the body hesitates before obeying.
A millisecond. It seems like little, but at the level where Diego plays, a millisecond is the difference between a goal and hitting the post, between a perfect dribble and losing possession, between magic and normality.
Diego returns to play in January 1984. The Camp Nou welcomes him back with a standing ovation. 90,000 people applaud. But Diego knows he’s not the same. He’s slower, more cautious. He looks to the sides before receiving the ball. Instinct used to follow freedom; no, now there’s fear. A small, hidden fear, one he’ll never admit: the fear that it will happen again.
The season ends badly. Barcelona finishes second in the league, behind Athletic Bilbao. Goikoetxea’s team wins the championship. The irony is so brutal it seems like fiction. Diego watches the awards ceremony on television, sees Goikoetxea lifting the trophy, and turns off the TV. He’s made up his mind.
In the summer of 1984, Diego wanted to leave Barcelona. But there was a problem: nobody wanted him. The big clubs in Europe saw him as a risk: injured, troublesome, expensive. Why pay millions for a player who might never be the same again? Real Madrid didn’t want him, Juventus didn’t want him, the English clubs didn’t want him.
Diego is alone. And then an offer appears.
Napoli. A club from southern Italy, the poorest in Serie A, never to have won anything significant. The most forgotten city in European football. Nobody understands why Napoli wants Maradona. Nobody understands why Maradona would agree to go to Napoli. But Diego accepts because Napoli is the only club that truly wants him, the only one that sees him as a solution, not a problem; the only one that believes in him when nobody else does.
Diego leaves Barcelona without looking back and arrives in Napoli with something he didn’t have before: anger. Anger towards Goikoetxea, towards Barcelona, towards everyone who discarded him. Anger that he will turn into fuel.
—The kick taught me something —Diego said years later—. It taught me that there were people who preferred to break me rather than see me shine.
Break.
—And that made me stronger. After Goikoetxea, I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. They had given me the worst they could give me, and I was still standing.
Another pause.
—Every time I stepped onto the court, I thought about him, his face, what he said… and I used that.
Smile.
—He did me a favor. He gave me the fuel I needed to become who I was.
In Naples, Diego did the impossible. He led a poor team from the south to victory against the wealthy north. He won two Italian league titles and a UEFA Cup. He became a god to an entire city. In 1986, two years after the infamous kick, he won the World Cup in Mexico. He scored the Goal of the Century against England, used the “Hand of God,” and lifted the trophy.
His ankle hurt in every match, it swelled up after every training session. He was never the same again, but Diego was. Or perhaps even better, because the kick that tried to destroy him made him indestructible.
And Goikoetxea kept playing, kept hitting, retired, became a coach. A normal, forgettable career. But the kick never left him. It became his sole legacy. The only thing the world remembers him for; every time someone mentions Goikoetxea, they mention the kick. Not the titles, not the matches, not the career; only the kick.
When Diego died in November 2020, the kick made headlines around the world. Goikoetxea appeared in the compilations, not offering condolences, but in the videos of the kick, over and over again, the executioner of a legend.
There’s a famous photo of Goikoetxea. He’s at home smiling, holding something in his hands. His right boot. The boot he used to hit Diego. He kept it for years like a trophy. He displays it in his house. When asked why, he said:
—It’s part of football history.
He’s right, it’s part of the story, but not the part he thinks it is. It’s not the story of a tough defender; it’s the story of a man who tried to destroy a genius and failed. Goikoetxea has his trophy in a display case. Diego has eternity. One keeps a shoe, the other lives on in the memory of millions. That’s the only difference that matters, and that difference is forever.
If this story touched your heart, tell me in the comments what you would have done in the protagonist’s place.
