During the summer of 1986, babies named after Diego Armando Maradona were nothing unusual in Naples. In his first two years living below Mount Vesuvius, El Pibe de Oro had transformed Napoli from a mid-table side into Serie A title challengers – oh, and he’d just single-handedly won the World Cup for Argentina, too.

The best footballer on the planet, he was worshipped by millions. In the week after the World Cup Final, 5.5 per cent of all babies born in Argentina were named Diego, a fourfold increase from previously. One suspects the figure in southern Italy wasn’t altogether dissimilar.

“Diego represented so much for us – he was one of us, he was the God of Football here in Naples,” explains Antonio ‘Bostik’ Esposito, the head of Napoli’s ultras back then, speaking with a hoarse voice shaped by a thousand cigarettes. “He’s the greatest footballer in history. He was superhuman.”

Today, Bostik runs a bar in the Largo Maradona, a spot in Napoli’s Quartieri Spagnoli district that’s home to a giant mural of Diego, plus a shrine to the great man with shirts and flowers, as well as stalls selling a whole host of paraphernalia. Before the mural was painted in 1990, this place was a drug den, frequented only by young people eager to forget their complicated life. Now, it’s visited by tourists and pilgrims from far and wide, every single day.

Five years since his passing, Maradona remains omnipresent in this city. A sticker bearing his image smiles from a gutter, then not long afterwards, a man walks past and Diego’s face, tattooed on his bare arm, suddenly appears.

In another bar, there’s a more curious relic. “In 1986, I was in Milan for the match against AC,” explains the establishment’s owner, Bruno Alcidi. “When I boarded the plane, I realised Diego was travelling on it, too. As he stood up after landing, a tuft of his hair was lying on his seat. I took it, just to have a joke with friends at home.” He’s since used the hair as the centrepoint of his own tiny shrine, complete with photos of Maradona and a statue of the Virgin Mary.

As Alcidi speaks, the son of God is closer than he realises. On September 20, 1986, a baby by the name of Diego Armando Sinaglia was born in Naples. Today, that boy, now 38 years old, is back in the area for a brief visit.

He’s Maradona’s eldest child, born to Cristiana Sinagra, after a fling during a difficult period of the football great’s relationship with future wife Claudia Villafane. A long legal battle followed between Sinagra and Maradona – in 1993, little Diego was recognised by the court of Naples as Maradona’s son, his name officially changed to Diego Armando Maradona Jr.

As he peers out of the window of his black Mercedes outside his nearby residence – a series of terraced houses, with a guard at the entrance – the likeness to his dad is unmistakable. Same size, same facial expression. “Same tendency to put on weight, too,” he tells us. “Drive in and park your car, then we’ll take mine. I’d like to stop by the hairdressers to get a shave, then we’ll see where to eat.”

Married to wife Nunzia, with two children, Diego Matias and India Nicole, he may be descended from a deity, but he doesn’t act like it. “I’m a common guy – I’d like people to understand that,” he says. “I don’t have any kind of superpower. I don’t have anything more or less than other guys like me. I’m introverted by character, and I have a hard time relating to people I don’t know.”

No such worries at Costantino’s hairdressers in Quarto, a few miles west of the city, where he’s greeted warmly and immediately offered coffee. He’s long been a regular visitor here, just like some of Napoli’s finest players of the modern era. “Costantino is history in Naples, he invented Marek Hamsik’s mohawk,” Diego Jr explains. “Marek came here for eight years – so did many others like Piotr Zielinski and Allan.”

“I love Diego for his simplicity – I love him because he’s Diego, not because of his famous name,” Costantino says of his pal. “We got on from the first day we met.” Other customers have tattoos of Maradona Snr – on their shoulders, their thighs or their backs – and proudly show them to us.

In front of the shop, another Maradona mural has been painted by a local artist. “I think about my father a lot,” Diego Jr admits. “After he died, it hurt me to see his face in every corner of the city. Now I’ve got used to it, and it’s also comforting to know that people board a plane to Naples to bring him a flower. People’s affection has eased my pain a little.”

Dunfermline and Beethoven

It wasn’t until 2003 that he was able to meet his father for the first time. Diego Sr finally recognised him as his son in 2007, after many years denying it. “For the person I am today, I owe it all to my mum, I grew up with her and my grandparents, but my father’s influence was also important at some points of my life,” he says.

“I was born Diego Armando Sinagra, but a few years later I was given the right to bear my father’s surname. I was six or seven. Bearing the name Maradona is peculiar, and I’ve often left Vodafone operators speechless when they call me. ‘What do you mean?’ they say. ‘Are you really Mr Maradona, or are you pulling my leg?’

“My childhood was good. We were not rich, but my grandparents and mum gave me everything I needed. I grew up in a common, working class family. My grandfather was a hairdresser and my grandmother was a beautician in his shop.

“My uncles loved me a lot – when I was born, my mother was 21, my aunt Francesca was 19, uncle Sasi was 17 and uncle Fabio was 15. They were like brothers to me, it was beautiful. My grandfather was like a father. In fact, he was more than that.”

Diego Jr agrees to drive into Naples for lunch – we choose a restaurant with a sea view near Castel Dell’Ovo. His family home is outside of the city these days, in Licola, and we quickly understand why – when he sits down, curious glances come from most tables around us. People have noticed him.

As soon as he stands up to make a phone call, a boy sitting at a nearby table asks him for a photo. When he wanders over to get some water, another approaches, too. “I told you I preferred to stay out of town,” Diego Jr tells us, when he sits back down with a smile.

He orders a hamburger with roast potatoes, and our chat quietly continues.

“The first clear memory I have of my father dates back to USA 94,” he explains. He was seven back then. “At that point, I really understood who he was, how important he was in football, and in general. I remember very well how he screamed into the camera after scoring against Greece. Although I have no personal recollection of it, I also know well about the two girls who escorted him off the pitch to doping control. USA 94 saw the greatest injustice in the history of football – both the 1990 and 1994 World Cups were basically stolen from him. I don’t have fond memories of that.”

Even though he wouldn’t meet his father for the first time until years later, Diego Jr had to live with the enormous expectations generated by his famous surname. He progressed as far as an appearance for Italy’s under 17 team in 2001, after several years in Napoli’s youth ranks, but the club went bankrupt in 2004.

That summer, he headed to Scotland for a trial with Dunfermline, but a deal couldn’t be agreed with his advisors. “We made an offer that we thought was fair for a laddie who hasn’t played for the first team,” Dunfermline’s director of football Jim Leishman said at the time. “But they thought it derisory, so we’re not going to pursue it.”

Instead he joined Genoa in Serie B, but didn’t feature for their first team as they were relegated to the third tier following a match-fixing scandal, despite 21 league goals from Diego Milito.

Soon, he was playing semi-professional football at regional level, with Servia, Internapoli, Quarto and Venafro. “People have often compared me to my father, but that’s superficial,” Diego Jr says. “He was unique, nothing compares to him. Why should I have compared myself? Just because I was his son? But Ludwig van Beethoven’s son didn’t play like his father, did he? They were two different people.”

Life’s a beach

His phone rings as we drink coffee. It’s Nunzia, who asks if we want to join her at Lido Varca d’Oro, a beach resort just a few minutes from their home, where she’d like to spend a sunny afternoon with their children. We decide to return to Licola, passing Napoli’s famous Stadio San Paolo, renamed the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona in December 2020. “I always dreamed of playing with the Napoli jersey at the San Paolo,” Diego Jr says. “Today children dream of Real Madrid or Manchester City, but I was only in love with my club.”

He headed to the beach during his playing career, too: becoming an accomplished beach soccer star, scoring in the 2008 World Cup final against Brazil, then fittingly helping Napoli to their first ever Serie A title on the sand, just like his dad did on grass.

“My surname was a handicap for me, no doubt,” he says. “Sometimes I was told ‘If you wanted to avoid all this attention, all you had to do was not play football…’ But I wanted to because I loved it!

“I had my share of success too, in my small way. I made more than 100 appearances for the beach soccer national team, I played in two World Cups and two European Championships. It didn’t happen because of my name, or because of my father. I’m one of the 10 most prolific Italian beach soccer players of all time, and I also played football for Italy at youth level. It’s true, I wasn’t like Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, nor did I get to play in Serie A, but that was partly because of my name.”

Happily, his relationship with his father grew closer – in 2016, the pair took to the field together in a charity match in Rome. “I’m very happy that I’ve been reunited with my son,” Maradona Sr said months earlier. “I love him a lot – he’s very like me.”

Even that brought challenges for Diego Jr, though. “It’s not easy for me to open up with people I’m not familiar with,” he admits. “That’s due to my story and also to the fact that, with a surname like mine, some people approach me with ulterior motives. I lost some of my childhood friends because I wouldn’t help them to take a picture with my father.”

Since his dad’s passing, he’s moved into coaching with lower league clubs Napoli United, Pompei and Montecalcio, spending much of this season managing Ibarra in Tenerife. “Today I very much love my life as a coach,” he says. “When I played myself, I thought that a manager had to be strict. I’m not like that now. It's difficult for me to define myself as a coach, but if I had to, I’d say that I’m honest with my boys.

“I hope that coaching is my future, but you must be able to reinvent yourself in life. I hope it doesn’t happen to me, but if I have to change path, I will. I don’t know how, but I will. Football has always been my life and I hope it continues to be so. My goal is to grow further.”

Approaching 40, he’s a man who’s increasingly at peace with himself, as the offspring of Diego Maradona. “Being his son is a source of pride for me – he made so many people happy,” Diego Jr says. “He was and still is an inspiration to so many people. He was a living legend, and in the years I was around him, he taught me so many things.

“For more than 25 years, he was a slave to cocaine. He didn’t always behave correctly, but who’s perfect in the end? I know he also said bad things about me over the years, but you have to put them into context. They have no value. At that time, my father was neither well nor clear-headed. I only judge him by what he said to me directly.”

The sun is sinking low behind the beach umbrellas to our left. A breeze has picked up and the late afternoon coolness begins to make itself felt. “Even with my mother, I’ve never talked this much,” he says.

Despite the perfect vista, it’s time for us to depart. As we do, Nunzia is lying on a sunbed with India Nicole, while Diego Jr sits on the sand, playing with Diego Matias. A normal family, and a normal dad, who just so happens to be the son of a footballing great.