We Don't Need Two Metaphors

I’d say it’s rare for a football documentary to open with anything akin car chase, but that’s how Asif Kapadia elects to start his profile of legendary Argentine footballer Diego Maradona. However, it turns out to sit entirely in line with the crazy and breathless story that follows. It’s an exhilarating opening which elicits comparisons to William Friedkin’s The French Connection and Claude Lelouch’s short film C’etait un rendez-vous but here, thanks to the accompanying 80s inspired soundtrack (Todd Terje’s Delorean Dynamite), transports the audience back to 1984 and Maradona’s arrival in Naples. He has just been signed by local football club Napoli for a then world record fee of £6.9 million and was met at the Stadio San Paulo, Napoli’s home ground, by a fervent hysteria of fans and journalists that would come to typify his eight-year spell at the Italian club.