Cubans assert Maradona died the same day as friend Fidel Castro

Record ID: 1588289

  • Title: Cubans assert Maradona died the same day as friend Fidel Castro
  • Date: 26th November 2020
  • Summary: HAVANA, CUBA (NOVEMBER 25, 2020) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF HAVANA'S SOCCER TEAM TRAINING (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) CUBAN SOCCER PLAYER, TONY YOAN LLORENTE, SAYING: "This is a subject that of course touches us, as a soccer player because of Maradona and as Cubans because of Fidel (friendship between Maradona and Fidel). It's a hard thing, because nobody expected it, that this should happen to a soccer figure, all of a sudden." VARIOUS OF HAVANA'S SOCCER TEAM TRAINING (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) CUBAN SOCCER PLAYER, DANIEL ALARCON, SAYING: "Perhaps it was fate that (Maradona) died on the same day as our commander (Fidel Castro). It is a historic day, not only because of Maradona's death but because he died on the same day as our commander and it makes itself felt. Especially because he is a world icon, the great soccer player that he was". CUBA'S CAPITOL PEOPLE WALKING IN STREET FIDEL CASTRO MURAL PEOPLE WALKING IN STREET
  • Embargoed: 10th December 2020 00:49
  • Keywords: Argentina Cuba Diego Armando Marado Fidel Castro Havana soccer
  • Location: HAVANA, CUBA - INTERNET
  • City: HAVANA, CUBA - INTERNET
  • Country: Cuba
  • Topics: South America / Central America,Soccer,Sport
  • Reuters ID: LVA003D62HJR7
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text:World soccer superstar Diego Maradona and Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro were great friends, and, coincidentally, both died on the same day, November 25.
    Maradona died four years to the day after his political hero, former Cuban President Castro, whom Argentina soccer legend considered a "second father" and whose face he had tattooed on his leg.
    The former Cuban leader had even gone as far as urging Maradona to go into politics.
    "They are united, for this date: November 25th. That remains for history: two great, one from soccer and the other from the Cuban revolution," Cuban resident Luis Perez told Reuters.
    The soccer star played a role in championing leftist leaders across Latin America - such as Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales - and in helping to lend them broader international appeal.
    "Everything Fidel does, everything Chavez does for me is the best (that can be done)," Maradona said on Chavez's weekly television show in 2007.
    The son of a factory worker raised in a shantytown on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Maradona first met Castro in 1987, a year after helping Argentina win the World Cup and four years before the fall of the Soviet Union that would usher in a new era of economic hardship in communist Cuba.
    An unlikely friendship between the often outlandish footballer and the well-read revolutionary deepened at the start of the century when Maradona spent four years in Havana to shake an addiction to drugs.
    In a twist of fate, Maradona died on the same date as his idol did four years ago - upon which occasion the soccer player said he "wept uncontrollably."
    (Production: Nelson Gonzalez, Anett Rios, Liamar Ramos)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2020. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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