The retrial into Diego Maradona’s death forces Argentina to revisit a national myth through medical evidence, addiction recovery, bipolar disorder, family grief, and a hard courtroom question: whether football’s most beloved rebel received the care he needed before he died.
The Patient Behind the Myth
Diego Maradona’s death has returned to court, and Argentina is once again being asked to look past the mural, the chant, the raised fist, and the left foot that made entire countries feel avenged. The retrial is not about the Maradona who belonged in stadiums. It is about Diego, the patient, recovering at home in Tigre after surgery to remove a brain blood clot, before heart failure killed him at age 60.
Seven health professionals are being judged over allegations that they failed to provide proper medical care. They deny the accusations. If convicted, they face prison sentences of 8 to 25 years. The first trial collapsed after one of its three judges resigned, following allegations of unauthorized filming in court for a documentary. Now the case begins again before new judges in San Isidro, with around 100 people expected to testify, including Maradona’s daughters.
The charge is culpable homicide, a crime similar to involuntary manslaughter. Investigators argue that those responsible for Maradona’s care knew the seriousness of his condition but failed to take the necessary measures to save him. A preliminary autopsy confirmed that heart failure caused acute pulmonary edema, which occurs when fluid builds up in the lungs. A panel of medical experts asked by prosecutors described the treatment he received at home as “deficient and reckless” and concluded that he “would have had a better chance of survival” in an appropriate medical facility.
That phrase lands heavily in Argentina. Better chance of survival. It does not erase illness. It does not turn tragedy into certainty. But it opens the door to the question that keeps the trial alive: did Maradona die because his body finally gave out, or because the care around him failed when ordinary discipline mattered more than legend?
A Recovery That Almost Held
Carlos Díaz, Maradona’s last psychologist and one of the accused, gave testimony that moved the courtroom into the fragile terrain of mental health and addiction. He said Maradona suffered from bipolar disorder and described his treatment as involving addiction comorbidity, bipolar disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder.
“With Maradona, we had to address a comorbidity of addiction. Beyond the addictive spectrum, we had to address bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder,” Díaz said.
The testimony complicates the public version of Maradona, which has always preferred extremes: genius or chaos, saint or sinner, victim or accomplice in his own destruction. The clinical portrait is less theatrical and more painful. Bipolar disorder is described in the notes as a chronic mental health condition marked by extreme mood shifts, from manic or hypomanic highs to deep depressive lows. It can affect energy, activity, thought patterns, sleep, risk behavior, concentration, and daily functioning, often requiring lifelong treatment with medication and psychotherapy.
In Maradona’s final month, Díaz said he was trying to help him recover from addiction. According to the autopsy, Maradona died without alcohol or other substances in his blood. Díaz recalled that the first time he saw him, about a month before his death, Maradona was “sitting in an armchair, drinking a glass of wine.” A second meeting took place on November 12, 2020. Díaz said the former player “was exceptional: very sober, lucid, connected, and, most importantly, willing to get well.”
The psychologist also emphasized the family’s “total adherence” to the recommendation that Maradona abstain completely from alcohol and substances. But he rejected accusations from some witnesses about how often or for how long he met with Maradona, saying the patient grew less willing to see him over time.
“It is anti-therapeutic to kick down a door to see a patient; it makes no sense. The only thing I’m going to generate is the destruction of a therapeutic bond that is just beginning to form,” Díaz said.
There is a terrible ambiguity in that defense. Addiction treatment depends on trust, but medical crisis demands vigilance. A reluctant patient may still need care. A therapeutic bond may be fragile, but so is a recovering heart. The courtroom must decide where patience ended and responsibility began.
Argentina’s Idol Meets Ordinary Medicine
Díaz said he and the rest of the medical team, along with Maradona’s entourage, wanted what was best for him. His most emotional line was not about blame but about possibility.
“What frustrates me the most is that I was convinced the patient wanted to be clean. The evidence showed that, as did the toxicological examination. He ended his life having been clean for 23 days. He was aware of the problem and was addressing it. It makes me angry that he could have made it,” he said.
He could have made it. In Argentina, where Maradona was not just an athlete but an argument about class, pride, defiance, and national pain, that sentence does not stay inside the courtroom. It travels. It reaches the boy from Villa Fiorito, the Boca Juniors idol, the captain who represented Argentina in four World Cups, scored 34 goals for the national team, and made the “Hand of God” goal against England in 1986 part of global football memory.
It also reached the wounded second half of his career, when cocaine addiction followed him publicly. He was banned for 15 months after testing positive for the drug in 1991. He retired from professional football in 1997, on his 37th birthday, during his second spell at Boca Juniors. Later came coaching: Argentina’s national team in 2008, a World Cup exit after defeat to Germany in 2010, teams in the United Arab Emirates and Mexico, and Gimnasia y Esgrima at the time of his death.
When he died on November 25, 2020, then President Alberto Fernández declared three days of national mourning. “Thank you for having existed, Diego. We’re going to miss you all our lives,” he said.
The retrial now places that mourning under fluorescent light. It asks whether devotion can coexist with negligence, whether fame distorted medical judgment, and whether a man treated as immortal was denied the ordinary seriousness owed to any vulnerable patient. Argentina already knows what Maradona gave football. The court must now examine what football’s most worshiped body was given in return.
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