Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Untouched by the hand of God, 1 Aug 2004
I thought this was a very superficial, badly-written and dull book. First of all, the author has not been able to interview his subject so we rarely get Maradona's own view on the many interesting episodes in his life. Secondly, the book seems like a collection of magazine articles and tabloid tales which have been poorly put together. There is very little on the actual football. Maradona's place in the Barcelona, Napoli and Argentina teams he played in is hardly mentioned. Nor are his team-mates. For example, there is almost nothing about Careca, Alemao, De Napoli, Galli, Ferrara: all great players who were his team-mates at Napoli. What did they think of Maradona as a footballer and as a man? What did someone like Schuster who played with him in Barcelona think? What about Passarella with whom he had a terrible relationship? We have no idea. Similarly, the author only touches on how managers such as Menotti, Biliardo and Bianchi tried to handle Maradona's on and off pitch personas. The one positive aspect of the book is that it does analyse to some degree Maradona's position as an important figure in Argentinian political life during some very turbulent years, but even this is not explored as fully as it might have been. Overall, I was very disappointed with this book. It focuses solely on the more salacious aspects of Maradona's life such as drugs and women, and even in those cases, fails to assess how these events really impacted on him as a man and as a footballer. Although a clearly subjective account, I found Maradona's autobiography far more interesting before this cobbled together volume.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not just another footballer's autobiography, 13 Jan 2009
On the face of it, this is a formulaic football biography/autobiography. It centres around a poor kid who has talent, makes it to the top of his game, buys his mum (whom he loves very much) a nice place to live and comes crashing back down to earth. However, the tale is far too stunning to be just another example of the genre.
however, this is no officially approved or ghost-written biography either - warts and all, discretions on and off the pitch, Maradona is laid bare. 'Hand of God' is no hatchet job either, care is taken to stay true to the facts and Burns is obviously one of the millions who have been awed by Diego's talent.
The seeds of Maradona's downfall are sown in his youth, the poverty and squalor of his upbringing are never forgotten. Diego becomes at an early age his family's passport to a better life; his football skills will be expected to provide for everyone. It's the first of a long line of weights that will be placed on Maradona's fragile shoulders. The ambition that young Diego will reach the top becomes an obsession to all his family and others, a goal that must not be prevented, no matter the cost. Rules are bent, and even broken to advance his cause, which has far-reaching effects, as the feeling that Maradona is a special case and above the rules that govern others will grow throughout his career, and in some respects come to define it.
In pure football terms, the story of Maradona's career is exciting and dramatic enough. Burns traces his career on and off the pitch. From the youthful talent and exuberance, which captivated so many from his earliest games and swept him into the Argentine national side and contention for the 1978 World Cup Squad. All the way through Argentina, Spain and Italy and four World Cups. Burns is often light on match action but manages to convey that Maradona's fortune on the pitch often mirrors his life away from football. However this isn't an account of Maradona's greatest moments or an attempt to relive the tension of Napoli's first scudetto or Argentina's World Cup in '86. Matches are referenced, important incidents recounted, and a general feel for how Diego's teams are faring are included. The book is no poorer for this, as the sagas on the pitch are more than matched by the epics happening off it! One match that is discussed in detail is the match against England from which the title of the book is taken. The match itself is glossed over to some extent, Burns using the two famous incidents are used to illustrate the dichotomy that is Diego Maradona.
Jimmy Burns does a superb job in writing 'Hand of God' - he is, of course, helped by having the most engrossing subject matter. Burns deserves much credit, though - 'Hand of God' is obviously a labour of love, much hard investigative journalism has gone into researching Maradona's life. The author has dug deep and been rewarded by some excellent insight into Diego, much of it garnered through the interviews that so distressed Maradona. Burns' prose may not always be the sharpest, yet that hardly matters, as this real life tale becomes as gripping and compulsive as many a thriller. Diego Maradona is, of course, an extraordinary character, a flawed genius, worshipped by people all over the world. His story reads like a Shakespearean tragedy, with a full cast of heroes and villains, mostly played by Maradona himself.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More than just a footballer, 1 Nov 2008
Those readers looking for a biography devoted solely to Maradona's footballing capabilities are going to be disappointed by Hand of God. As Burns stresses in the book's opening stages: "My main concern has been to investigate Maradona as a unique social, political and religious phenomenon". This is as much a study of personality as it is a look at his performance on the pitch. That can be seen in his extensive and informed description of Maradona's ill-fated spell with Barcelona. The fact that Maradona's first six months with Barcelona reaped only 6 goals is remarked upon; however, a more intense focus is put on his drug taking, the many Argentines resident in Barcelona providing him with a range of personal services - including sandwich and pizza-making - and his relationship with the club's board of directors.
Burns has an illustrious CV (including spells of work with The Economist and Financial Times). That shows in Hand Of God. Burns's writing is free of sports-writing cliche. The decision to preface the main text with a quotation from American novelist Norman Mailer's The Prisoner Of Sex, regarding the perils of fame, is a good indication of that(and also happens to be apposite). It also shows in the thoroughness of Burns' research and investigations into his subject. Hand Of God, could never be dismissed as a cut-and-paste of newspaper articles. The half-Spanish, half-English Burns interviews a multitude of people, including: Maradona's psychoanalyst, international team mate Ossie Ardiles, international manager's Cesar Menotti and Carlos Bilardo and FIFA officials amongst countless others.
Reading Hand Of God reminds you of just how prodigious Maradona's talent was. For instance, by the age of 20 he had already played 200 first division matches in Argentina, plus internationals and friendlies, in which he had scored nearly 140 goals. Little wonder then that the 1986 World Cup winner's ball skills bring out the lyrical in people. His national manager Cesar Menotti once said of seeing Maradona in full flow on the football field: "It's like being a classical music fanatic alone in a private room with a symphony orchestra performing Beethoven just for you". Whilst Eric Cantona added to the cultural analogies in 1995 by pretentiously stating: "In the course of time, it will be shown that Maradona was to football what Rimbaud was to poetry and Mozart to music".
Burns takes Maradona's comments and actions on matters than football far too seriously. He describes Maradona's politics as being based on "a crude but fervent nationalism which makes him vulnerable to any Argentine government in power, however unethical its practices". He then proceeds to lambast him for not speaking out publicly on Argentine citizens who `disappeared' during the years of the military regime. These points may be well correct. However, it would also be true to point out that Maradona is not running for elected office or seeking to be seen as some kind of philosopher, intellectual or moral arbiter. Burns seems to forget that Maradona was just a footballer, a sublimely talented one at that, but a mere footballer nonetheless.
At a late juncture of this biography Burns reminds us that he has spent half of a decade working in Buenos Aires "covering wars, government overthrows and debt crises". He applies the same gravitas to his study of Maradona as he would those subjects. That results in portentous sentences like: "Not since Eva Peron's visit to Franco's Spain in 1947 had the arrival of an Argentine generated such expectation among Catalans". Or, "Not since the assassination of John F. Kennedy had a single news item out of Dallas provoked such an international reaction as that which followed the announcement that Maradona had tested positive for drugs".
My paperback edition of Hand of God comes overburdened with four pages of acclaim for itself. These warm words come from a diversity of sources, ranging from Noel Gallagher of Oasis to the Financial Times. Undoubtedly, much of that acclaim is intended for Burns's book. But, I suspect a fair portion of that praise is intended for the man of whom Denis Law remarked: "Maradona has everything. There is no department of his game you can fault. He is strong, brave and skilful".
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