Diego Maradona Is Mourned in Argentina - The New York Times

For many Argentines, Diego Maradona, who died on Wednesday, was no mere soccer superstar.

“I feel like a member of my family just died,” said one.

BUENOS AIRES — People laid flowers and lit candles below the mural of Diego Maradona outside the stadium here that bears his name.

At the Obelisk in central Buenos Aires, another man waved a banner depicting Mr.

As people gathered across the country to honor the man often simply referred to “El Diego,” some chose the Buenos Aires stadium where he got his start in 1976, as a young player in the Argentinos Juniors club, and which was later renamed for him.

“I feel like a member of my family just died,” said Joaquín López Castan, 19.

“He was Maradona, he always managed to pull through,” said João Dejtiar, 19.

Maradona, who wore the traditional No.

(“It was scored a little bit with the head of Diego and a little with the hand of God,” he later said of that goal.).

“A narrative is created that the goal wasn’t illegal because in reality it was God doing justice after the defeat in the 1982 war,” said Lívia Gonçalves Magalhães, a historian at Federal Fluminense University in Brazil who studies the intersection of soccer and politics in South America.

“It was the happiest moment of my life,” said Juan José Azcurra, 67, his tears giving way to a smile as he recalled the goal.

Maradona wore his leftist politics on his sleeve, and Ms.

Maradona “a rebel who was passionate above all else and said what he thought without caring about the consequences.”