Diego Maradona as you have never seen him before

This stunning documentary charting the mercurial soccer legend’s rise and tragic fall will have fans and non-fans alike on the edge of their seats

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Diego Maradona

Four and a half stars

Director: Asif Kapadia

Starring: Diego Maradona, Maria Rosa Maradona, Fernando Signorini

Rating: M

Running time: 130 minutes

Verdict: Equal parts man and myth

You don’t need to know much about soccer to be captivated by the story of Diego Maradona — as it is recounted, here, by documentary maker Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna).

But aficionados will appreciate the finer points of the Argentinian striker’s on-field performance in the face of relentless, targeted attacks from opposition players.

And Kapadia has uncovered a wealth of never-before-seen footage of the soccer megastar in action (the director had access to more than 500 hours of tapes from his subject’s personal archive as well as home videos supplied by his ex-wife, Claudia Villafane).

The eponymously-titled film — described by its director as the third part in a trilogy about child geniuses and fame — distils Maradona’s meteoric rise and tragic fall into two compelling hours.

Scene from the documentary Diego Maradona by director Asif Kapadia. Roadshow Films.

Diego Maradona: Rebel, Hero, Hustler, God covers the soccer legend’s early years — from his dirt-poor childhood in the slums of Buenos Aires to his time with Argentinos Juniors and an ill-fated stint with FC Barcelona, where he was plagued by illness and injury.

And there’s intimate footage of Maradona with his large family, whom he supported from the age of 15, supported by a voice-over interview with his sister Maria Rosa.

But the focus of the film is the soccer legend’s seven-year stint in Naples, where he led the underachieving club to victories in two Italian Championships and a UEFA Cup.

Why did a huge star like Maradona sign up — for a world record fee — to a club like SSC Napoli, which had never won a major tournament?

Scene from the documentary Diego Maradona by director Asif Kapadia. Roadshow Films.

This is the complex question the documentary sets out to answer.

Editor Chris King says he knew the film would begin with its subject’s arrival in the dangerously down-at-heel Italian city from the minute he saw the “unbelievable footage” shot by Juan Laburu and Gino Martucci in the 1980s when Maradona was at the peak of his footballing abilities

“Suddenly you are in the room with him. You are in the car with him. You are travelling around with him.”

Ramping up the tension still further is the incendiary passion of the Neapolitan fans, to whom football is closer to religion than sport.

Scene from the documentary Diego Maradona by director Asif Kapadia. Roadshow Films.

Maradona’s friend and personal trainer, Fernando Signorini, recounts how a nurse stole a vial of the footballer’s blood to be stored next to that of city’s patron saint, San Gennaro.

At the height of Maradona fever, it seems everyone wanted a piece of him — including the Camorra, the Italian crime syndicate that dominated the city and its supply of cocaine (to which Maradona eventually became addicted).

The extraordinary footage of a stadium erupting as the footballer swaggers onto the pitch gives us a fleeting impression of what it might have been like to be in Maradona’s boots.

All this stands in stark contrast to Maradona’s lonely departure in 1991, after an unprecedented 15-month suspension for using cocaine prior to a game — a decision some see as punishment for the winning goal he scored during a penalty shootout in a World Cup game between Italy and Argentina, which was played in Naples a few months earlier.

The only subject in Kapadia’s “fame trilogy” not to have died prematurely, Maradona’s mythical tragedy has its own distinctive twist.

Diego Maradona opens July 25

Originally published as Diego Maradona as you have never seen him before