Once a month, Tomas holds a virtual tour of Buenos Aires and tells Maradona’s story. Today, Tomas shares with us all his knowledge about Diego’s time with Argentinos Juniors. If you’re a football fan and a Fanstriker reader you can use our discount code VTFANSTRIKER for a discount while booking your next virtual tour on Homefans.

Today we’re taking a trip to Argentina to discover the youth of Diego Maradona. Joined by Thomas, a young Argentinian and a specialist of Argentinian football history. Tomas was born and raised in La Paternal, the same neighbourhood where the Diego Armando Maradona stadium is located. He is offering to visit the story of Diego Maradona here in Buenos Aires. Everything is made online. An unique virtual experience.

Hello Tomas, as I mentioned in the introduction, you’re a super fan of Argentinos Juniors. How did this passion came to you? Why are you a fan of the club? Did it come from your family or from your friends?

Yes, in a neighborhood like this, in which the club is also the center of the social life, it is hard to avoid Argentinos Juniors and not be involved in the club. So if you like football, which in Argentina is quite a big deal, you tend to be linked with the club even if you like any other sports. Then you fall in love with the club. The sense of belonging is huge here. It is hard to not be a part of the club’s community. For example, I’m a fan since I can recall because everything happened in or around the club here in the local community of La Paternal.

People in La Paternal pay tribute to Maradona in the streets

Football culture in Argentina

So you share your passion with everybody in the community, not only your family, but also your friends and everybody in the neighborhood is an Argentinos Juniors fan. There is no traitors around? (Laugh)

No, most most of the people here support the club, actually. It is hard to be apart from it. Even those who are not supporters of the club then tend to appreciate it in a very special way because it is also part of their lives.

On a day to day basis you can go ahead and talk about Argentinos Juniors with anyone, right?

Yes, they have the emblem of the club in their shops, for example. You get to see jerseys or clothing of the club all the time here in the streets of the neighborhood. I still live here. I’ve been living here since I was born and I returned to our neighborhood last year. And yes, it is it feels like home.

There is a big fascination across the world, for Argentinian football. In your opinion, what makes it so special?

I think the most special thing about Argentinian football is that we produce, together with Brazil, of the most skilful players in the world. I think it happens because besides sports, football is the main entertainment people have especially in the working class. Kids spend their whole day running behind the ball, without realizing that they are actually improving their technique all the time. Most of it happen because they tend to play in any random piece of ground they can find in the streets. So when they are a little bit older, they go to a club, and then it is a matter of polishing those rough diamonds created by the spontaneous soccer played that takes place all the time in the streets and in the neighborhoods of this country. I think that the technique and the quality of the players is what makes Argentinian footballers different than anywhere else in the world.

Maradona is everywhere in La Paternal

Maradona : a legend close to Buenos Aires’ community

So football is everywhere all the time, I believe it’s it’s what makes Argentinian football players so good. Today we’re here to talk about an Argentinian legend of football, Maradona. You live in La Paternal the neighborhood of Buenos Aires were Argentinos Juniors and the Maradona stadium are located. Maradona started his professional career in Argentinos Juniors. Do some of your relatives remember seeing him play in the stadium?

Yes. When Diego came to the club, he was only eight years old. When he was playing in the academy, everybody knew about him in the neighborhood. So when he was about to play on the First Division, and people knew he would play soon, they would arrange their work and everything to attend to the stadium, just in case Diego appeared. You could see him playing in the Academy, and he was an outstanding player since he was a child. An uncle of mine had a hardware store at that time located five blocks away from the stadium. He was taking turns with his co-workers to take care of the store when the matches were taking place. In 1976, he skipped his shift at the store to watch Argentinos Juniors game against Talleres de Córdoba, just in case Diego appeared for his first match. He was a lucky on that day because that was the Diego’s first match.

As years went by, Diego became famous all over the country. People from every single club came to the stadium just to see Diego play. Soon the club had to rent a bigger stadium in order to be able to host the huge crowds that came to see him. At that time, we had a very old wooden stadium. Let’s keep in mind that I’m talking about the late 70s. Here in Argentina, there was just one match per week shown on TV. So in order to see football, you had to attend to the stadium. Everybody said Diego was so incredible that you had to see him with your own eyes. So in a matter of months, all of my relatives, all of the members of my family, who are around 50 years old now, attended to the stadium to see Diego play. He was really a big deal in a time without social media and with fewer press coverage. So yes, it was outstanding.

I think that it’s incredible to take that into the context of the 1970s. As you said, just by word of mouth, people knew about how great this player was. At such a young age, he attracted so many viewers in the stadium and I believe that’s what makes him truly special. There was no time where he was this underrated underdog player. He just came on the scene being a legend.

He was an immediate legend. He was only 15 years old when he he made his first appearance. So we are talking about a child who was playing along with the top stars in the Argentinian league at the time.

A virtual tour of Buenos Aires to know everything about Maradona and his time with Argentinos juniors’.

Every month you collaborate with Homefans and offer a tour of La Paternal for Maradona fans, hosted on Zoom. So you have fans from around the world joining you. You tell them everything about the neighborhood and how it was impacted by Maradona. What are the highlights of the tour? And what can people see?

Yes, it was a great initiative that we could arrange with together with Homefans. We can share Diego’s story and his golden age with people from all over the world as you said, and including those who might not know about Diego’s first club. It is great to have a camera to be in the same streets he used to walk when he lived here and to share the story of Diego’s golden age, with people from every place in the world. We had visitors from Serbia, Croatia, France, Northern Europe, in the Netherlands, everywhere. We didn’t want to make a tour about the recent episodes of Diego’s life, but about his golden age.

Maradona Street Art

We’re lucky to have all the main sites within just a couple of blocks. We visit the stadium in which he made his first appearance. We have the street art, which is all over the neighbourhood and increasing on the recent days. Those paintings show Diego at different stages of his career but also other key individuals like Francis Cornejo, who was his first coach. Everything happens around the stadium. We cover the whole perimeter outside of the stadium. We go to the sanctuary, which was built a couple of days after he passed away. We also visit some of the beautiful paintings we have around. I conduct everything, the stories and the meaning of all the things we get to see. I tried to make the visitors understand how deep Diego’s impact was on this club and on the local community.

We can agree that Diego put us on the map. We were just a random neighborhood with a random club in Argentina. Diego’s appearance really changed history. So that’s the key point we want to share with people. It is about sharing the story of Diego at the time he called his golden age. Of course, we would prefer to do this tour in person. We will do it when people are able to travel but nowadays virtual tours are the best alternative we have to keep spreading these beautiful stories.

La Paternal : a neighborhood marked by the prodigy Maradona

We’re glad that we can have some some experiences around football thanks to Zoom even though we have to stay home. What’s your favourite part of the tour? What’s maybe something that really surprises people? Can you share a memorable anecdote about Maradona and his time in Argentinos Juniors?

There are many parts of this tour that are special to me because I was one of the people who designed it, I’m not just the person that hosts it. The new sanctuary, which was built recently after Diego passed away, is one of my favorite part of the tour. It is located inside the stadium and it includes all the offerings that people left for Diego’s memory in recent days, of course, and it has grown day after day. You know people leave jerseys, soccer balls, football boots, the flags of their teams, everything! Everyone has space to pay him tribute. It is quite moving for us. We are still soft hearted about it because everything is recent. There is a beautiful Diego painting on the back of the sanctuary. I like it a lot.

Tomas and his friends contributed to the Maradona tributes with this painting

Then speaking of anecdotes and stories, I have a lot of them. We added to the Q&A part. People ask a lot about Diego’s story. I got a lot of interest and deep questions about Diego’s matches, about the key moments of his career. It shows that they’re really into it. So I love the Q&A because I get to see how involved people get with my storytelling. I see how involved they are in this tour in which I just share the passion I have for Diego and for the club. As I told you before, I try to explain how important he was for the club and the whole community. He was so impactful that people spontaneously gather around the stadium specifically. They did not gather around the Diego’s house or anywhere else. And in the following days, the gatherings became bigger and bigger, because the stadium became like a sacred place in the city.

Even in the strange situation we are going through with COVID, people come to pay tribute to Diego. It is quite touching for us because we belong to this community. It was like losing one of us, losing the best of us. That’s when we got the idea of making the tour, not to talk about the sad things that just happened, but talk about his best years. It was a way for us to explain why the community’s reaction was so spontaneous, so deep and so lovely. It was incredible, and we are still quite soft hearted about it. It is very emotional for us to talk about it. After a couple days, the club built the sanctuary I was telling you about. It is a beautiful place. People can visit it on any weekday. What has been happening here is very touching. Seeing people with not only Argentinos Juniors jerseys, but also with the national team equipment or with other teams jerseys. That really shows that Diego was the king, the biggest legend of Argentinian football and everybody was surrendering to his feet. They did that in our stadium. So it is officially the most Maradonian place in monasteries you can find.

That’s definitely the place you would want to have a tour and if you are a Maradona fan. Currently it’s not possible to go there physically but you can go there virtually thanks to your virtual tour. Thanks to you and Homefans we can discover Maradona’s legacy virtually through Zoom. I believe it’s one of the best thing that we could do right now to remember what a great player he was.

It is nice to remember his Golden Ages and specifically. When everything was pure and just about football.

Every fan can leave a message on this wall to remember Maradona

Participate to the Maradona Tour in Buenos Aires

I strongly recommend anybody that is reading to this interview to give it the Maradona tour a try because it’s really fascinating. You learn a lot about Maradona and the way people truly appreciate him and his impact on football in the whole neighborhood. Thank you very much for answering all of our questions Thomas. I can’t wait for February the 20th for the next Maradona tour to happen and to see a people’s reactions because I believe it’s truly fantastic. Where can people find out more about you and the tour?

You can check Homefans social media and also the Homefans website in which you can book the next tour. The next date is on the second weekend of February. You can join me for the Maradona tour that we were talking about. You can also join me for the Argentinos Juniors which is a different one in which we go around the stadium, the dressing rooms, the museum that we have on the club and on the pitch itself. So you can book these both virtual tours through Homefans. It is quite cheap, 7€ for the Maradona tour (5€ with the discount code VTFANSTRIKER). It is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon if you’re a football fan!

I am looking forward to these tours. I actually miss discovering new things about football and learning about football culture in different places. Click here if you’re interested in joining the virtual tour about Maradona on February 20th at 7pm CET. Bonus, you get a special discount if you’re a Fanstriker with the code VTFANSTRIKER. Thomas, thank you very much for this interview. I will see you on Zoom for your next tour. Bye.

Bye Bye. Thanks to you and thanks to all the listeners of the Fanstriker podcast.

Visit the Homefans shop to buy collector Maradona jerseys and South American jerseys. Apply code FANSTRIKER at check out for a 10% discount.

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