Cocaine, Camorra, Call Girls: Maradona's Downfall
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It's November 8, 1989. Buenos Aires is Estadio Luna Park, a cavernous arena that's played host to some of the brightest stars in Latin American boxing, basketball and music. The Harlem Globetrotters have just dazzled a week previous, but even they are about to be out razzle dazzle by this event, a union Argentina and the world has anticipated for years.

Diego Maradona, World Cup winner, Italian league champion, doesn't do things by halves. But even by his standards, the 29-year-old striker's long-awaited wedding to Claudia Villafane, mother of his two daughters, is off the hook. 1,100 people were treated to an all-night party featuring champagne, caviar and an almost nine-foot cake.

Black, silver and grey drapes hang all around Luna Park, focused on a 40-foot waterfall surrounded by plants. The Afanye's dress is encrusted with over 16 pounds of pearls, and its designer follows her everywhere to keep it in check. All through the day, reporters have tried and failed to get access to the couple. Maradona had even punched one plucky paparazzo trying to sneak into the ceremony.

Later on, one of the complaints about the media blackout, Maradona scoffs. You didn't invite me to your wedding, he says. The party goes on and on and on. Folks only start packing up at 8 a.m. the next day. The whole thing has cost millions.

But Maradona has the cash. He's only just signed a contract extension at his club Napoli worth $1.5 million a year, plus massive bonuses, a quarter of the team's souvenir sales and a dozen first-class round-trip flights to Buenos Aires each year. Among the guests are heavyweights of sport, entertainment and politics, but also Piero Pugliese. Pugliese is Maradona's driver.

but he's also, it's rumoured, a hitman for the Camorra, Naples' brutal underworld, whose leaders have leapt on Maradona mania to increase their already huge criminal fortunes. Camorristi have been showing up to Napoli's training sessions for years and using members of the club's ultra-fan group to rob rivals or pull triggers. Accusations are growing that they're deeply involved in Italy's illegal sports betting black market,

Some even think they're pressuring Maradona himself to throw matches. None of that is bothering Pugliese, however, at his boss's wedding.

He's having such a great time in Luna Park that he falls in love with a local woman named Alessandra. A while after, the day before he's due to leave, Gugliese gets a call from Guillermo Coppola, Maradona's glitzy agent, asking him to carry a package to deliver to the player in Naples and to carry it as hand baggage. "It's just a bunch of Buenos Aires newspapers," Coppola says. "They must be special editions, though."

because Coppola is offering 25 million Italian lira, or just over 50,000 US dollars in today's cash, for delivery. Soon after, when folks at a local bank start asking questions about Pugliese's money, he calls Maradona. There's chaos down here, he says, and the cops are sniffing around. There's a brief silence on the line. "'Come over,' the star tells his driver. "'Meet me at home.'"

The conversation is being taped, not by police, but by another client of Pugliese's, a mysterious lawyer, a neo-fascist named Angelo Ceraborni.

Pugliese is scared that Coppola, the agent, is trying to bring his new girlfriend Alessandra in on a Camorra drug ring. In 1991, as the sex and drugs case against Maradona is roiling, Carboni and Pugliese stroll unannounced into the anti-drugs office of Rome's Palace of Justice, and they demand to see the judge. Here's your evidence, they say. Diego Maradona isn't just a puppet on the Camorra strings.

The world's most famous sportsman, the pair adds, is a full-blown cocaine trafficker. This is the Underworld Podcast.

Hello and welcome to the weekly audio visual experience that leaps into another dark corner of the criminal hinterland. I am your host Sean Williams in Aotearoa, New Zealand, Kia ora koutou, and I'm joined as ever by my irrepressible colleague and infrequent steak-eating buddy Danny Gold in the Big Apple. We are both journalists.

reporters. We know shorthand and we doorstep grieving families, so you know we're good and moral people. Actually, I don't know shorthand and I don't care, do you, Sean? It's horrific, actually. I remember it. I get cold sweats even when I think about doing those tests. Anyway, before we dive into our second episode about Diego Maradona and the mob, I think I

I think there must have been a call to or maybe even three people to ask when is this episode coming out online? Let's do some housekeeping. Thanks to everyone subscribed to the Patreon. There's plenty of bonus interviews and stash our specials there, including one I think we're going to put up in a day from now as we're recording this.

from the road trip that I just did. There's plus ad-free shows, notes, and other incredibly cool stuff. That's patreon.com slash underworldpodcast. And more, you can sign up also on Spotify or on iTunes directly in the app. Yeah, there's merch online in case you want to look like us, which is unlikely, but it's worth a shot, isn't it? Remember to direct your tips and abuse to our email address, which is theunderworldpodcast at gmail.com.

Quick shout out to Napoli, who actually won the Italian League a couple of weeks ago, thanks to the mighty Scottish duo of Billy Gilmore and Scott McTominay. I think today they signed Kevin De Bruyne, which is mad. We are always up on the news here, guys. But to Diego Armando Maradona, a second time. In part one, we left the Argentine legend a World Cup winner and winner of the Golden Ball, which is the tournament's MVP. He's on his way to winning Napoli's first league title in over 60 years.

He's a hero to millions and probably the world's most recognizable sportsman. But he's been burning the candle at both ends for years, pulling drug-fueled all-nighters with piles of cocaine and rotating battalions of sex workers. And he's keeping company with some of the most feared gangsters in Naples, particularly the Giuliano family, which belong, of course, to the Camorra.

And on the back end of the 1986 World Cup win in Mexico, itself tainted, if you listen to that show, by the rise of the Medellin cartel in Colombia, Maradona fires his longtime agent and powerful Buenos Aires, Jorge Saito-Spila, replacing him with a flashy 38-year-old called Guillermo Coppola. You know, call it anti-Italian discrimination, but that name, that is a criminal's name. Okay.

thoughts and comments to the email listen now to part one if you haven't already but if you have you'll know then that we're up at the top of the mountain and we're about to careen down its flank we'll end up with a tape 1991 phone call Maradona mates to a gangland madam to wind up with him facing some pretty serious criminal charges

And then we'll go into more controversy, bans, mafia match fixing the Kimura's fortunes for the 90s and early 2000s. Maradona's unlike the final act in Kuliakan of all places is insane. And we'll finish with a rundown of where the Kimura is today. So there's lots to get through.

But guys, let's begin in the summer of 1986, which is when Maradona returns to Naples from Mexico, a world champion. He's literally on top of the world. He's revered by millions, not least in his native Argentina, when some of the more wingnut fans are calling him literally a gift from God. And a couple of months later, he kicks off the 1986-87 Italian League with Napoli tipped to win the thing.

Fun fact, there is actually a church of Maradona, the Iglesia Maradoniana, founded in the Argentine city of Rosario. It said it's found a quote, I have a rational religion, and that's the Catholic Church. That's questionable. And I have a religion based on my heart and passion, and that's Diego Maradona. I bet that guy loves a fiery conversation. Anyway, he is kind of a big deal, Maradona. But things aren't great in El Mundo de Maradona, the hard-living,

catching up with him and a media storm is brewing over his alleged fathering a son with a 22 year old Neapolitan woman who swears Maradona is the dad even though he's been with Claudia Villafane the whole time and who calls her newborn son Diego Armando Maradona which is not low key is it? Villafane leaves Naples for Buenos Aires because why wouldn't she? The attention is beginning to strangle the star

And he rarely ventures out of his home other than to train with his Napoli teammates. This is a great city, he says, but I can hardly breathe. I want to walk around. I'm a lad like any other.

Except, of course, he's not. He's the most famous man in Naples, maybe even the most famous person in Italy or even Europe. And to Napoli fans, including those violent ultras, he's an irreplaceable talisman without whom the whole Napoli project will come tumbling down quicker than a Camorra-built housing project. A friend of Maradona's, speaking to The Guardian reporter Ed Valiemi in 1991, says, quote, Maradona had achieved everything, but he wasn't really happy.

He became introspective. He wanted to flee from those gathered around him. He always said, "I'm not a saint. I'm a football player." Football has been his whole life, but now he seemed to be looking for another man inside himself and outside football and to look for new friends. These people were the lowest of the low, and Maradona, weak and lonely, couldn't say no. Those friends in low places are, of course, the mob. Maradona has been making friends in Naples underworld since he arrived.

But as the walls start closing in, as he turns more and more to drink and drugs, he falls into the arms of goons who are all too happy to embrace him. Remember from show one, the Giuliano clan based in the ancient districts of Forchella had been making tons of cash from fake Maradona merchandise and warned his former agent to back off opening in copyright cases in court.

Whether under duress or not, Maradona had then appeared to side with the mobster. Quote, I'm perfectly happy if businesses in Naples can survive because of my face. In January 1986, as Napoli are on their way to the league title in Italian Cup, a domestic double, two Giuliano Camoristi had shown up at the club's training ground, seeking out Maradona and telling him they wanted to get to know him even better.

By this point, later in the year, he's a guest of the clan at parties, feasts, even family baptisms. Around the time of the World Cup, Italian cops raid the home of Carmine Giuliano, one of the clan's young leaders.

They discover a photo album with 71 snaps of Carmine posing with Maradona, sitting on sofas, raising toasts, arm in arm with some of Naples' most brutal drug traffickers. Incriminating photo albums, man. What a quaint time. Yeah, just a nice little instant camera, one-hour photos. A better time, you could say. Not for Maradona.

Well, better than now because he's dead. Anyway, at this point, it's possible Maradona, with all his fame and fortune, could quite simply slip free from the Commoders' grip.

But A, he's addicted to cocaine, alcohol and sex. And he's in the mad cycle of play football Sunday, party till Wednesday, sober up Thursday, Friday, Saturday, rinse and repeat. And B, because beside the Camoristi, he's only surrounded by hangers on and sycophants. None more opportunistic than this new agent Guillermo Coppola. Writes John Ludden in his book Maradona Once Upon a Time in Naples, quote, the larger than life 38 year old fellow charismatic Argentinian said,

Coppola's appetite for making money was matched only by an insatiable lust for cigars, good wine and bad women. I only have one of those lusts and it is the one about money, guys. Coppola negotiates for Maradona to have his own weekly TV show for younger listeners. The TV show is kind of like a podcast you watch on a television. It's like a really big phone. You can only watch it one certain time of day on one day a week. Imagine that.

Despite Napoli's great form in the 1986/87 season, Maradona is struggling with the left ankle that was torn to shreds by medieval defenders in the Spanish league while he was at his former club Barcelona. He takes tons of quarters and injections which allows him to play through the pain, but he's suffering physically, which only spirals his dependence on cocaine's numbing powers.

In later life, Maradona opens up about this time, quote, the most difficult thing is having people around all the time, people surrounding me. That when I was ill, I had my problems with drugs. I felt like the loneliest man on earth.

That's pretty sad, but the drugs aren't the only thing that Camorra is into by the mid to late 80s. We spoke last time about how it went from small-time scams to cigarette smuggling and later narcotics, and then made hundreds of millions of dollars off the back of the 1980 El Pininia earthquake, and all the corrupt government contracts and the building projects it burrowed its way into.

Well, it's also deep into gambling. And this drives right at the heart of what the Kimura even is, or how it even came into existence. Kidnapping too, or was that more of an Andrangetta thing? That was definitely the Andrangetta. I think there's some...

graph that I spoke about in that last and ragged episode, but I think it was like 90% of kidnappings during the time were what guys from Calabria or Calabrian's on other Calabrian's. Yeah, so they were pretty much the guys when it came to that stuff.

So quick history lesson now. Most experts agree that the Camorra comes into being as the unification of a bunch of prison gangs when Italy is unified itself in 1861. Italy is really young. It's crazy. And it makes its early cash from political corruption and highway robberies.

The etymology of the word Komoda is believed to be a portmanteau of Mora and Kapo. Kapo, of course, being a boss. And Mora is an old betting game. So Komoda refers to the cash taken by bosses from the game. Yeah, I think they were bandits too, right? In the countryside and in hills and stuff like that. Like...

like highway robbery men that sort of thing they definitely had that presence there in World War II yeah yeah they're pretty like small time uh until the war and that post-war period but here's a description from a 2012 William Lang of Asia post in fact most it's not a post mate I'm so sorry to my idol uh this is a vanity Fair article because uh yeah why not just quote the great man in full

The Camorra is not an organisation like the Mafia that can be separated from society, disciplined in court, or even quite defined. It is an amorphous grouping in Naples and its hinterlands of more than 100 autonomous clans and perhaps 10,000 immediate associates, along with a much larger population of dependents, clients and friends.

It is an understanding, a way of justice, a means of creating wealth and spreading it around. It has been a part of life in Naples for centuries, far longer than the fragile construct called Italy has even existed. At its strongest, it has grown in recent years into a complete parallel world and, in many people's minds, an alternative to the Italian government, whatever that term may mean. Neapolitans call it the system, with resignation and pride.

The Camorra offers them work, lends them money, protects them from the government, and even suppresses street crime. The problem is that periodically the Camorra also tries to tear itself apart, and when that happens, ordinary Neapolitans need to duck. If you're listening, King, please, just please come on our show so I can tell you how great you are. I might do an entire show on the Atomic Bazaar just so I can reread all these articles, so...

Yeah, what a hero, man. Jesus, just settle down, dude. This is a family podcast. Yeah, sorry. I'll take a moment after the show. Anyway, by the 1980s, the Camorra is making over a quarter of a billion dollars a year. All this in an extremely poor city, of course, and it's employing up to 60,000 people across the wider Campania region.

It's also going through a bit of civil war, with Medellin-like assassinations of political figures and judges, all because of the desperation of a capo named Raffaele Coutolo's attempts to seize control of the entire thing.

But we'll get more into that in another episode. Basically, the Camorra is also known for its sophisticated money laundering enterprises, especially through bars, hotels and restaurants up and down Italy. But gambling remains in its DNA, particularly that of the Giulianos who are cosying up to Maradona. It's an open secret across Naples that the clan runs an illegal football pools, the Totonero, from their villa in the Forchella.

For US listeners, this is an accumulator bet, a parlay. So you're guessing the results of all eight fixtures that particular match week. Which is insane. Like no one ever would win that. It has like lottery, like mega millions type odds.

Yeah, that's what everyone in Europe does. Like half my mates will bet on all what, like 10 football results on a weekend and they never win. Although I get lots of WhatsApp screenshots of just missed it by two results. Yeah, man, that's an accumulator. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what we do. Me and my brothers do home run bets like every every every day, you know, you throw something on Otani and Judge and Soto maybe or Lindor and then you put four other people and it's like,

15 000 to 1 odds but you never win yeah no you literally never do uh or maybe you do but you don't there is a legitimate pause at this time which is the state-run total calcio calcio is uh football in italian and this accumulator tries to ensure that nobody fixes matches because like we just said obviously you would need to fix eight separate matches to be sure of a payout but

15 billion to one odds. Hello, this is Italy. So there have been illegal single match bets for years, of course. In the late 1970s, the owner of a Rome restaurant called La Lampada had noticed that a bunch of players at top division side Lazio were dining at his place. And so, you know, what else does he do? He convinces them to throw games in return for a cut of the winnings of him and the guy who supplies his pasta. Yes, this is like...

deep cut Italo core crime. I mean, it's incredible stuff. The only thing more time would be if he poisoned the meatball so they lose or something like that. I really wouldn't like rule it out. Business owners, quick question. When someone hears your phone number, does it stand out or does it just sound like a bunch of numbers, a bunch of, you know, just some jumble that no one's going to remember? Let's fix that with Ring Boost.

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Order now, fill out their quick survey to support the show and enjoy the best part of your week brought to you by In The Cloud. I mean, the first game these guys throw, it ends in a draw, which wins the Lampira Syndicate, which just lest we forget is a chef and his master guy, a ton of cash.

But a ton of subsequent games don't go down as planned, and the restaurant owner and his pasta guy are down almost half a million bucks. In March 1980, they actually go to the cops in anger. It's so Italian. Handing them a list of 27 players in 13 teams.

they've roped into the match-fixing scam. And on March 23rd that year, on the final whistle at stadiums across the country, Italian financial police run onto the pitch and arrest 11 players and a club president live on national TV. It is crazy stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's just major snitching. And for your own idea...

There's no way those like the pasta guy and the chef got out of this alive. Right. But also like if they just got arrested, I don't, if you pay these guys to throw a game and they don't throw it, aren't they not guilty? I don't know.

Let us know. Answers. Just don't send us answers to that. No, don't bother, guys. As a lot of you will know, this is far from the end of Italian match-fixing scandals. There is, of course, the 2006 Calciopoli affair when cops attack the phones of referees, club officials and others and get dozens of convictions, plus relegating Turin giant Juventus to the second division. Oh, yeah, and it happens again in 2011. Whoopsie.

Back to the mid-1980s, though. The Julianos realised they don't have to throw games to make money. They could just offer an alternative underworld pause, the Totonero.

and it's wildly popular. Neapolitans are pouring millions of lira, tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars into this thing each week. Punters can play on credit and the payouts are tax-free. It's every gambler's dream to terra no secco or hit the jackpot earning a fortune from the mob. He writes, "It came as little surprise in a highly superstitious city like Naples where people carried with them blessed amulets to ward off evil spirits

that they were those convinced Totonero numbers came in dreams, placed there by deceased relatives. It was all just a question of translation. For example, if Diego Maradona appeared, he obviously represented number 10.

It was said that with an aid of an ancient medieval practice in numerology called Kabbalah, believers could try for themselves to pick their own numbers. Yeah, I think in that book I always mention Naples 44. They talk about how like old school superstitions, the people of the city of Naples are like, especially out in the rural areas, almost like it's like this, this mystical thing.

pagan type of like that's how it makes it sound you know like doesn't sound catholic at all it sounds like so so mystical and superstitious in that way it's it's it's fascinating stuff yeah it's like santeria right it's like really really similar to that i was gonna say that i had a i had a dream about a boxing journalist named steve bunce uh who invited me to a berlin home in a skyscraper that had loads of like porcelain cups what's that all about

When did you have this dream? Last night, I actually slept for the first time in like days. I think it means bet on Canelo. Canelo's fighting Crawford, I think, in September. So I'm going to bet on Canelo because he's from Sinaloa. So I think that means bet on him. Man, that fight's going to be outstanding. Yes, incredible. On Netflix too. Thank you, EBS. Shit. Oh my God. Okay, yeah, boxing aside. Some Neapolitans even use spirit guides called Santoni or Santoni to predict results.

Such is the clamour for the Camorra's Totonero. Carmine Giuliano is one of the biggest figures in the city's black market, therefore. He gets the nickname Il Diorne, or the Lion, and unlike other Camorristi, he loves the limelight. He cashes in on the adulation of those in Naples' ancient city centre, not least from his association with Maradona.

It's not like the cops have no idea about any of this at the time. A memo from the leader of Naples Flying Squad in 1986 refers to, quote, the strange presence of Maradona in the company of those convicted or under inquiry for association with the Camorra, but also a curious relationship of some kind with those convicted with the Organization of Underground Football Pools, the primary funds of the Camorra organization, end quote.

That same year, judges in Turin open investigations into Totonera up there too. And they get hot on the tail of the Giulianos and the Lorusos, a powerful rival clan based in the north of Naples.

And this won't be the last we hear about the Totonero. But for now, in 1987, despite the drugs and the drink and the cortisone injections and the mad wayward sex life, Maradona is raking it in. Perhaps because of it. That summer, Napoli win the Italian league, pipping Juventus to the title by three points.

At the final game that May, the Napoli ultras unfurl a banner at the San Paolo Stadium. Naples has three beautiful things it reads. The Bay, Vesuvius and Maradona. Now, Danny, some lesser clubs might celebrate a major win with an open top bus parade or a party in the town square. You know how long Napoli's fans go wild after this league win?

Yeah. Three months. And that's only two and a half months longer than some of my old Berlin sessions. Fans hang a banner at a local cemetery. Quote, you don't know what you're missing. It reads. That is incredibly festive. I mean, I like it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. What more festive way to celebrate a football league win than traveling to a cemetery and hanging a banner? It's a little disturbing. Dark. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty weird.

The player himself is paraded around the pitch like a messiah. He's crying with happiness. He's overwhelmed by the achievement.

That night, the night they win the league, Naples is alight with fireworks and street parties. But Maradona isn't with fans or fellow Napoli stars. He's at a party held in his honor by Carmine Giuliano in a village on the edge of town. Writes John Ludden, quote, the venue was kept secret until the last moment. Thanks, John. That's like literally a sort of mafia party. So, yeah, the guests arrived in sleek black stretch limousines surrounded by mean faced bodyguards,

and most prized beautiful mistresses clinging to their arms. It was said to have been a lavish affair, even by Camorra standards. This thing is pretty lit. Ludden goes on, quote, against a backdrop of Maradona's finest goals of Napoli being replayed endlessly on large video screens, the finest women, wine and white powder money could buy was on offers to those lucky enough to be present by special invitation.

all took advantage of the Giuliano's generosity. None, it was said, more than Diego Maradona, who partied equally hard as the most drunken, delighted Neapolitan.

enjoying the forbidden fruits of his hard-earned labor, many of the gangs have gambled heavily on the back of Maradona's leading Napoli to success, earning themselves huge fortunes. Something tells me that if the Pacers win or Oklahoma or Edmonton, the celebrations, they're not going to look the same. No, I don't know. Right? The finest white powder and women in Indianapolis just doesn't have the same ring to it. Yeah, the finest steaks at Cattleman's Ranchers. I like Indianapolis too. The finest fried okra at Akachi. Yeah.

It's not quite, it doesn't quite hit the same. Yeah, I don't know. Like, John, I mean, I think I'm reading an early version of John Lennon's book, so it's probably a bit unfair to him. There's a lot of words in there. Anyway, in December that year, Maradona signs his huge lucrative new contract with Guillermo Coppola reckoned to be making a huge cut. Coppola comes out in public declaring that, quote, Maradona's children will eat caviar for the rest of their lives, which is,

I don't know. Caviar sucks. Definitely. No kids are going to like it. I've only had it once in St. Petersburg at this insanely fancy hotel. I got a free stay. It's just, it's just salty balls, man. It's just salty, squidgy balls. Nothing that good comes in a tin. Prove me wrong. I don't know, bro. That's what I thought. And then I had some good caviar recently and it's pretty amazing. Okay. Counterpoint. Uh,

Danny Gold said so. The following season, Napoli finished second to AC Milan, who were then owned by media tycoon and future Bunga Bunga endurance champion Silvio Bascone and staffed by stars including the Dutch duo Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten. Maradona finished his top score, of course, but he's sliding further and further into chaos and brattiness.

flying off on one of his first-class flights to Buenos Aires in a huff and demanding that club owner Corrado Ferreiro fires the coach, which he refuses to do. Worse still, Napoli lose the final game of the season in May 1998, 3-2 to Fiorentina of Florence. And with growing rumours they'd actually thrown a previous game to Milan at the behest of

I said it, guys, behest of the Camorra. Sometimes you just got to sort of linguistically go there, Danny. I am. I'm an edgelord of the English language. This alleged mafia match fixing is laughed off by the Napoli higher ups at the time. And for a while, investigations go nowhere, but they'll be back. Oh, yeah, they will soon enough. For now, though, it's back to business as usual.

which in Napoli and Maradona's case means conflict, drama and the occasional flash of footballing brilliance. The next season, Napoli finished second again, this time behind Internazionale of Milan, led by Italy's national striker Aldo Serena. Maradona slips way down the goalscorers list this year. Thanks to his constant partying, he just looks like a broken man in body and spirit.

He can barely walk before matches, revived only by the jab of a doctor's needle, and once a year he goes under a surgeon's knife to have leftover cortisone literally scraped off his joints with a scalpel. What's more, the Argentine seems bitter at Foligno for sticking with the coach and to the fans for questioning his commitment, which isn't the least fair thing given his photograph down benders every night, but

You know, I think if you're the king like I do in this show, then everybody else is a serf, right? Anyway, this May, Napoli beat German side Stuttgart to win the UEFA Cup, which is the second most prestigious club cup behind the European Cup. Today, rebranded as the Europa League. That's a lot of words for a non-football fan. It is a thriller. 5-4 in aggregate. Maradona scores a penalty in the two-legged victory, but any goodwill is short-lived.

Maradona's cocaine abuse is completely out of control. He's nailing it from Sunday through Wednesday every week before his end of week quote cleansing. Even Corrado Feleno, the man who had moved heaven and earth and reached out to the mobs to secure Maradona's transfer, admits being the star's quote jailer. Guillermo Coppola has met with officials at Marseille, then one of Europe's best teams, to discuss a potential transfer issue.

And when, a couple weeks after the Stuttgart game, Maradona limps out of a match against lowly Pisa, the fans turn on him, hurling coins and plastic bottles onto the turf. The fans who boo me, Maradona says after the game, are pure cretins. Dude, that is some dark turning on your player stuff. I mean, like, you know, I guess 76ers, like the Ben Simmons treatment, even though, to be fair, Ben Simmons kind of did it to himself, and it sounds like...

Maradona, I guess he's doing it to himself too, but you know, it's rough dude really rough. What is the thing with fans in Philadelphia? I don't really know much about it, but everyone seems to crap. Philadelphia is just a city man. They don't mess around out there. It's uh, just a bunch of scumbags, but in like a great kind of way, you know, we love violent scumbags, but in a nice way. Yeah. I mean, I went to Philly once to, uh, to interview, um,

Bernard Hopkins and it seemed like a nice place and Bernard Hopkins is weirdly nice go to Kensington see how you feel about it then okay okay will do isn't that like gentrified now or something I don't know no no it's not my friend oh wait no that's that is the place the Fent place yeah okay yeah yeah

It's a bad place. No transfer for Maradona. Remember, we're talking about Maradona, I think. No transfer for Maradona, though, is made. And in March 1989, he attends the lavish wedding of a Giuliano clan member.

He also befriends Gennaro Monturi, head of the Napoli Ultras, who has ties to the city's underworld, and he takes on Piero Pugliese, nominally a security guard at the San Paolo Stadium, but rumoured to be a Camorra trigger man as his driver. At this point, hooked on gear and increasingly depressed, Maradona is little more than a Camorra marionette, a symbol of legitimacy for gangs that are biting off bigger and bigger chunks of the European cocaine trade.

With Coppola raking it in at his side, Maradona's circle of friends in Naples winnows to an almost entirely criminal coterie. It includes a young man named Felice Pizza, which, doesn't that just mean happy pizza? That's a pretty good name. This guy works on the metro, but he's also a gopher for prostitution rings, bringing girls to his new famous friend.

Maradona's little sister Maria marries an underworld figure who introduces Maradona to a burly club owner called Italo Iovine, a Camorra boss's nephew and a key figure in the underground sex trade. You might remember Iovine from part one's Cold Open. It's he who hooks Maradona up

with Donna Carmina Cinquegrana, one of the Camorra's favorite madams and who Maradona is taped by cops asking for girls and drugs. I feel like the only way I can do these Italian names is by like going way OTT with the accent, which is kind of how Italian works, right? Do it. But none of these folks, yeah, not even Carmine Giuliano, Carmine Giuliano himself, get as close to the star as Mario LaRusso, a.k.a. the captain.

the square-jawed, flinty-eyed head of the Lo Russo Camorra clan. It is Lo Russo who brings Maradona his cocaine, and Lo Russo who is often there with the player, snorting and linking him to Iovine and the Grand Night sex workers. When robbers blow a hole in a Rome bank vault in 1989, and steal, among other treasures, Maradona's 1986 World Cup golden ball, it is the Lo Russos he reaches out to.

Salvatore Lo Russo, the clan's elderly patriarch, actually claws back some of the minor possessions from Maradona after this raid. But the ball, he says, has already been melted down and sold by the robbers, who work for the Piccoazzi clan.

writes Luggan, quote, the Picozzi did not want a war. On being informed of the bad news by Don Salvatore, Maradona was wise enough to know how things worked and not kick up a fuss. For this was Naples. Even kings had to behave.

You'd think this utter turmoil would ruin Maradona on the field. Nope. Incredibly, Napoli win their second ever league title the following year, with Maradona hopping off to Buenos Aires for his show-stopping nuptials that November. Remember the cold open? In the summer of 1990, Italy hosts the World Cup, and incredibly, Italy and Argentina face each other in the semi-final. In Naples.

And so it is here, the ultimate choice for Neapolitans. Does this city root for a country that hasn't always loved it, indeed a country that for long periods have actively hated it? Or do they choose King Diego and his Argentine compadres, over half of whom have family ties to the south of Italy in any case? On the eve of the game, Maradona himself decides in typical fashion to inject even more spice into the occasion.

Napoli nonne Italia.

I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and I hope you'll join us for Season 4 of Dateline Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them. You will want to listen closely. Maybe you could help investigators solve a mystery. Dateline Missing in America. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Jan Marselek was a model of German corporate success. It seemed so damn simple for him. Also, it turned out, a fraudster. Where does the money come from? That was something that I always was questioning myself.

But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him? His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong. I don't know if they followed me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story. Because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.

Listen to Hot Money, Agent of Chaos, wherever you get your podcasts. This is Andrew from the Scary Mysteries Podcast, where every single week we dive into insane and creepy true crime compilations on Mondays, and on Wednesdays we have our Twisted News episodes, where we get you up to speed on the most terrifying and strange news stories currently happening all around the world. We're covering the topics you want to hear about. Missing persons, killers, UFOs, and more.

Best of all, we don't waste your time with any fluff or fillers. Just stray to the true crime details. So go check out the Scary Mysteries podcast. I'll see you there. He declares Napoli is not Italy. Maradona goes on. There have been, quote, decades of racism against this city, he says, telling Napoli fans to back his nation to make the World Cup final instead. Maybe not the cretins he called out shortly before Napoli.

Many do, though. And as West Germany cruelly knock out England after a penalty shootout, the Argentines go through in exactly the same way against Italy, with Maradona scoring the decisive spot kick. He wheels off in celebration. The Italian crowd fumes. Maradona reads one morning headline is the devil. I mean, this whole thing is pretty crazy, man. Like what a

Yeah, it's wild, dude. This is an incredible story. Yeah, I mean, this is how good sports were without PR managers. It's like so much better. Argentina lose to the Germans in the final, but to millions of Italians, that is academic. In their eyes, Maradona is a traitor, a villain, even to many in Naples who've worshipped him for almost seven years. Napoli kick off the following year with a thumping 5-1 win over Juventus.

But the vibes, listeners, the vibes are not good. Maradona claims there's a campaign against him in Naples and promises to leave the club. Since the semifinal of the World Cup, he says, quote, I have had no peace. I mean, the guy has been on a seven year drug fueled terror. It's probably on his third or fourth lap of Naples entire prostitute circuit. No wonder. No wonder he's at his limit.

But you know what William S. Burroughs said, Danny? Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts. Yes, Maradona might be higher than the average day trader most weeknights, but gossip across Naples suggests there may well be those who are out to get him. Not least among them, the violent gangsters he's been calling friends for so long. You see, the Camorra have just had a very bad financial year.

Given Napoli's poor performance in the 88-89 season, they'd set Totonero odds of 4-1 of them winning the 89-90 season. That, of course, hadn't stopped flocks of Napoli fans laying millions on their beloved team. So when Maradona's boys had in fact won the league title in 1990, the gangs had lost fortunes.

It is at this point, it's theorized, that Camorra leaders began intimidating their Argentine talisman, stepping up the hate after his World Cup comments. It's around this time when it... Sorry, is someone in the house? Hello? One second, just give me like 30 seconds. If you're getting arrested, it would be great for the podcast.

Okay, I'm back. It's around this time that Mario LaRusso, realising his phones are being tapped by the cops, he starts throwing Maradona's name around in conversation, bringing him to the attention of the Carabinieri, the gendarmes of Italy. Even Corrado Fellaino, the club's owner, is said to have had enough of his wayward champion at this point, lifting protections from cops and mobsters. If Maradona wants Marseille, he reckons, and hates Italy so much, why am I looking out for him?

All this is coming at a time when Italian-organized criminal violence is going through the roof. A civil war between two Ndrangheta families kicks off in the Calabrian town of San Luca in 1991. Listen to our recent Ndrangheta kidnapping episode for more on that. There is the 1992 bombing of mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards on a highway outside Palermo.

And the Camorra civil war is killing civilians across Naples, including young kids, as it strengthens its ties with Latin American drug cartels, christening an era of so-called Camorra di Impressa or corporate Camorra.

The Italian president comes out and says the organized crime, quote, seems to have taken control of part of the national territory. His government signs in new laws, pretending mobsters from communicating from prison via in-person meetings, phones or mail and sending or receiving large amounts of money.

This in turn creates a new wave of pentiti, or turncoats, mafiosi turning state's witness, which begins to chip away at the power of the gangs, albeit at a cost of even more heightened violence.

An example of this is the September 1990 killing of a 12-year-old boy named Andrea Esposito, one of a ton of so-called moschili, or little flyers, used by the Camorra for their speed and agility. But expendable, of course, when they've served their purpose. Here is the New York Times writing about the murder. Quote, Like thousands of boys who skirt the law on the raw-bone streets of this southern Italian city, Andrea knew plenty of ways to make money.

He even worked an early morning shift at a bar on the outskirts of town. But one mid-September day, he made a serious mistake. He witnessed a gangland killing and talked about it. A gunman from the clan of the Camorra, the Neapolitan version of Sicily's mafia, tracked Andrea to the bar, forced him into a corner and shot him twice in the back of the head. Two days earlier, in another town outside Naples, an eight-year-old boy died.

The boy, Paolo Longobardi, was at his home with his father Antonio, where the Camorra gunman emptied a hunting rifle through a bedroom window, killing them both. Even by the standards of Italy's crime-hardened South, this has been a blood-soaked year. And in September's bursts of killings of children, flight

And September's burst of killings of children frightened many Italians into the disturbing conclusion that they are losing their long battle against the mafia and its cousins. And that's a crazy, it's nuts, right? Like absolutely insane. Yeah. Like just wild, wild stuff, man. Yeah. And brilliant writing. Uh,

which shows you that good writing and writing good stories gets people engaged in the news. Amid this backdrop, Napoli's club leadership and underworld supporters see a chance to make Maradona a scapegoat. In November 1990, Napoli win a league match against Fiorentina. Maradona doesn't play. He spent the night on a coke-fuelled rager with his agent Coppola and the usual gaggle of cool girls at Naples Hotel Paradiso.

The day after the match, the Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy's most prestigious sports newspaper, runs with an extraordinary cover story about Maradona's freewheeling lifestyle. A dark evil taking hold, it reads. A mysterious illness affecting the world's greatest player. Its author, a correspondent named Franco Esposito, knows Napoli inside out. He'd have known, for example, for years that Maradona was a drug addict.

but held off precisely because of the consequences from Feleno, the Ultras and the Camorra. Now it's clear. They've given them the green light to bury Maradona in public. Subsequent exposés interview drug pushers, pimps, bordello owners. If only half this stuff is true, fans think, how the hell does this guy have enough time to play football? Which is exactly what my coach thinks about my writing and podcast, Come Soon.

The love affair between Napoli and King Diego is well and truly over. And on February 14, 1991, Valentine's Day, ironically, police go public with evidence that Maradona has been ordering drugs and prostitutes, including the extraordinary taped call from Episode 1's cold open. One of the women, a Brazilian dancer from Manaus called Suzy, goes public with her story of three nights with the star. He said I was beautiful. The most beautiful, she said, modestly.

He kissed my lips. He wasn't particularly doting, but he knew what to do. I recall that he particularly liked to suck my big toe. That's...

Wow. Yeah. That's topical considering, uh, some of the stuff that's been in the news, but also like what an amazing quote from, uh, from a prostitute, you know, just, uh, and do you think she added in the, the kissing me on the lips thing to like, sort of bring, like, you know, make Maradona look bad in front of it. The other Italians. Possibly. Um,

Aren't you not supposed to kind of a bit like throw that in there? But I guess he knew what to do. Isn't like the, you know, that's not the worst thing in the world to say about a man that you've had sex with. I mean, that's the minimum though, right? That's the absolute minimum. It's pretty damning. That's better than he didn't know what to do. Maybe he was having so much pain in his foot at the time that he was just sucking a big toe to try and get some like gold dust off so he could play football again. I don't know.

Maradona at this point, despite this absolutely devastating quote, is defiant. He'll sue every witness involved in the case, he tells journalists and quote, give all the proceeds to the poor little children of the streets of Naples. That is that's quite the financial pipeline from big toe of a Brazilian to poor kids.

The following month, Piero Pugliese strolls into Rome's Palace of Justice and starts spilling all kinds of beans about match fixing, drug trafficking, and of course, his intimate knowledge of Diego Maradona's sordid private life. Wait, so two things. One, who is he again? And two, this is like, I mean,

I mean, this is insane, right? He's at war basically with the entire city, including all the organized crime groups there and the media. And this is a city that like he was the king of what two years before this. So this is an insane story. It's nuts. Right. And it's like,

This doesn't really come out in any of the documentaries. It's just in a handful of books and like, and not the big ones, like pretty obscure stuff. And yeah, so like Pugliese, this Piero Pugliese, he is the guy who was like a security guard at the San Paolo stadium where Napoli play that Maradona like hires as his personal driver, but he's also rumored to be a gunman for the mob. So not the kind of guy you want to piss off.

And he has also at this point just come back from Buenos Aires for that mad wedding where he has tried to be roped into an alleged drug deal for Maradona's agent, who's also working between Latin America and the Camorra at the exact time when the Camorra is just rising and rising as a global narcotics trafficking organization. It is not tangential, the stuff between Maradona and the mob. It's all there.

And yeah, like he's the king. So he just doesn't care. He's just shouting his mouth off. It's nuts. No, but now they're again. Now they're against it. Like the whole thing is crazy, dude. What an insane story. It's mad. Pugliese, he wants to become a pentito, a turncoat. And the authorities duly obliged. Amazed they've stumbled on such a goldmine of information. He then owns up to a host of gangland assassinations and promises to lift the lid on those pulling the strings in Naples blood soaked underworld.

He goes into detail about the alleged cocaine smuggling plot from Maradona's Buenos Aires wedding, claiming he'd been paid out of the bank account of Maradona's TV show production company, no less.

But other stuff doesn't add up, like Pugliese's claim that the Argentine squad had smuggled kilos of coke on a plane to play a friendly match against Italy, or that Maradona himself had thrown matches in the ill-fated 1987-88 season to bloat the bank balance of the Camorra's Totonero when anybody could see it was Maradona who had worked hardest on the pitch to try to win the league title that year.

Guillermo Coppola cuts Maradona loose himself and flees home to Buenos Aires, himself deeply implicated in the star's web of drugs, sex and match-fixing.

The split, he announces to media, is, quote, purely affable and only temporary. While Coppola adds unconvincingly that, quote, Diego Maradona did not and has never taken drugs. It's like Bill Clinton levels there. Judges call Maradona in for more questioning later that March to answer questions about the more serious charge of drug trafficking.

Maradona admits he knows Pugliese, although the gunman is "certainly not a friend". There was a package, Maradona admits, and the pair did open it together. But it was just newspapers, he says. There weren't any drugs. A month later, Maradona tests positive for cocaine after a match against Puglia team Bari. Authorities hand him an immediate suspension.

Shortly after, as fans hold vigil outside his home, Maradona slips away and boards a flight for Buenos Aires, claiming it's for his daughter's birthday. But few believe he'll come back. He has fallen, as the Italians say, della stelle alla stalle, from the stars to the staples. Here's Ed Valiemi at The Guardian that year. Quote, Naples without Maradona.

It's like a deck of cards stripped of both its joker and its aces. A besieged court robbed of its king and jester. The fans gathered at the Campo Paradiso training ground as though at some sign of wake. During the night, the fallen idol had left the city, fleeing the leaden weight of secrets that now eclipsed his genius. Secrets which had driven the world's most uncannily brilliant footballer into exile from the game.

In some ways, I've bungled like all men, Maradona says. But my vices are the vices of industrialists and not a few presidents whom you leave alone. If someone has to pay for all this, then I'll pay. But not Naples, not this wonderful city. It's pretty dope response, man. Seriously. Yeah. I mean, he's like he speaks really well. But while he's away, there is a but Maradona goes into more detail about the campaigns to smear him.

I will not report back to training for Napoli because I'm convinced there is a plot against me, my wife, daughters, brothers and parents, which places us in real danger, he says. As a man and father, I bear the responsibility of defending the greatest treasure I possess, my family. He says there have been vandalism to his Mercedes and the rearranging of furniture at his home, which is a classic warning from the Camorra.

The fans are torn. How'd you get over the downfall of a man who's carried the spirit of Naples for almost eight years? Some of them are tougher on him than others. Says one to the Guardian, quote, If I saw Maradona trying to climb out of a well, I'd kick him down it. Which, very specific analogy there, mate. Yeah.

And that, barring some minor contract disputes, is the end of Maradona's time in Naples. He officially leaves the club in 1992, taking time out before joining Spanish side Sevilla for a year. He then joins Newell's old boys of Rosario in Argentina in 1993. And he spends two years at Argentine Giants Boca Juniors. This team here.

In 1994, Maradona scores a goal against Greece at that year's World Cup in the USA, but is sent home in disgrace shortly afterwards when he fails a doping test. That same year, information reported by British newspaper The Independent seems to finally back up the claim about Napoli's match fixing in 1988. A reporter there discovers that several Napoli players had been on the Camorra's payroll, throwing games in exchange for drugs and call girls.

Almost the entire squad is hauled in front of prosecutors and in some cases their wives and girlfriends. And it's even alleged Guillermo Coppola is instrumental in supplying the stars with cocaine. Coppola, however, is on the run. Music City 901 is a true crime podcast unlike anything you've heard before. I'm Brandon Hall. I've been a 901 dispatcher for over 25 years.

I've heard it all. And now, so will you. I don't know. Where's the emergency? Now somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband. They shot them? Each episode, I break down real emergency calls and the chaos behind them. From the voices on the phone to the action on the street. Take your hands off the bus! She's fired! This man's a man! Real 911 audio. Police body cam.

Okay, this is a crazy one. The highly anticipated second season of the hit podcast Proof is finally here. Proof is an investigative true crime podcast co-hosted by Susan Simpson of Undisclosed and Jacinda Davis of Evil Lives Here.

Proof made headlines for its first season in 2022 after proving the innocence of two Georgia men serving life sentences for murdering their friend Brian Bowling when they were just 17 years old. So 25 years later, on December 8th, 2022, both men were freed based on evidence that was unearthed in Proof in the podcast, which again, insane. In the second season of Proof, Murder at the Warehouse, it's called,

Susan and Jacinda, they're back on the case again, this time traveling the streets of Manteca, California, to uncover who really murdered 18-year-old Rene Ramos.

On June 5, 2000, Ramos' body was found buried under a pile of debris inside the shell of a new Home Depot building. Despite tips hinting at alternate suspects, tips that were ignored until now, Rene's boyfriend, 18-year-old skateboarder Jake Silva, and Tai Lopez, the 33-year-old uncle of one of Jake's close friends, were arrested and convicted of her murder.

Fans of true crime and investigative series won't want to miss this riveting new season. Again, last season, they got someone off. They got two people off of a murder. So follow the case as Susan and Jacinda uncover long overlooked evidence about what really happened to Renee by listening to Proof Murder at the Warehouse wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Richard Serrett. Join me on Strange Planet for in-depth conversations with the world's top paranormal investigators, alien abductees, Bigfoot trackers, monster hunters, time travelers, alternative archaeologists, remote viewers, and more. As I was on the way to Area 51, I was stopping on the side of the road and just taking measurements, and I found this one spot where time slowed down by a fraction of a second. It's not supposed to do that.

From the two big categories, animal mutilations and human abduction, you have to conclude that genetic material is being harvested. Well, I reached for a rifle and I turned and looked and it was already moving away and it was descending the bluff. There's no way any human could have went down it. It was probably a 75 degree angle straight down almost. On Richard Serrett's Strange Planet, we're redefining reality.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Do not go any further. Turn around. Go home. He's only recently been spotted at the Uruguayan report of Punta del Este, having been accused of ordering the murder of a Buenos Aires club owner and suspected drug trafficker. In 1997, age 36, Maradona's body finally gives out and retires from football altogether.

Napoli's fortunes fade with him. They're relegated to the second division in 1998. They go bust and they get relegated to the third division in 2004 before bouncing back. They feel they have had and are bounced, bouncing back.

Yeah, anyone's going to get that reference. I don't know. I won't get into the fate of the Camorra during the 1990s too much because we'll definitely do a separate show on the Civil War. Raffaele Coutolo and his defeat of everybody in his path, including the notorious Michele Zaza. Then the rise of the De La Oro clan, which becomes the biggest one in the late 90s and early 2000s.

The Giuliano clan that benefits so much from its association with Maradona though, it continues to be a force in the Forchella and Naples, led by Luigi Giuliano with Carmine, his younger brother, continuing to broker deals on the streets. But in 2000, cops arrest Luigi and the following year he becomes a pentito, turning state witness and dishing the dirt on his siblings.

Luigi has even dished dirt on the death of Roberto Calvi, God's banker, who we've covered on here a couple of times. This prompts a wave of revenge killings from rival Camoristi, including that of Luigi's son Giovanni in 2006, who'd refused to join Italy's witness protection program. Carmine was already dead by then, having succumbed to throat cancer in 2004.

But Luigi, aged 75, has gone a completely different path with his own vocal cords, having studied singing in prison and then graduated from the prestigious Toscolano Centre in Umbria. The ultras of Napoli, they're still singing too, not least this year having won their fourth league title. But the club has never fully shaken its association with the underworld.

In 2010, Italian striker Fabio Quagliarella tells media that he was forced to leave the club for Juventus after poison pen letters had been sent accusing him of links to gangsters, cocaine use and paedophilia.

Around the same time, bandits carjacked the club captain and legend Slovak midfielder Marek Hamsik at gunpoint. A 2011 spate of robberies targeted star players and their partners, leading to yet more newspaper articles connecting leading ultras with Kamoristi. And I have a point. So wait, I don't, I don't, I don't get like...

If you're an ultra, it doesn't mean like you die for your team. But these ultras are targeting the players on their own team for like robberies and crimes. Yeah, there's not like, isn't that that would seem to go against if you believe that the players are just kind of like servants of the club when they're trying to like rinse you out of money, which I guess most for most people.

stars are, then I guess you can square that circle. But yeah, it's pretty weird. After an away game in Rome, 200 ultras questioned by cops after trashing a train, they are found to have links to organized crime including drug trafficking and robbery.

Naples writer Biagio Di Giovanni has said that, quote, it appears the mafia is targeting the Napoli players to get a piece of the team as it rises again. So, Scott McTominay, keep an eye out on your Corolla.

Subsequent wars have sparked even more police crackdowns to the extent that today, thanks in part to cops and in part to COVID-19, which shut thousands of restaurants, bars and hotels used by the Camorra to wash its drug money, the clans aren't nearly as powerful or violent as they once were. And the cocaine industry has pretty much been cornered by the Indrangheta in Calabria. Again, if you want to know more about them, I think we've done like three or four shows on them at this point.

According to police intelligence, as of last year, Naples is home to just 46 clans, with another 24 in the surrounding province. And in 2023, there were 10 gangland killings in Calabria, compared with 34 in the year beginning mid-2012, which...

is good news right that's that's upbeat stuff that's what you want to come on away from these shows feeling if anyone wants to see something upbeat about diego madonna you should definitely watch madonna in mexico from netflix it is a mini series about his short tenure as coach of the dorados de sinaloa and kuliakan of all places uh home if you didn't know already to the sinaloa cartel

He still has that pure passion for the game, the taste for drama and people worship him. Although it's clear by that point is an extremely broken man. Quote, when we heard Maradona was coming, everyone thought the obvious would happen regarding the city's reputation for organized crime, drug trafficking and Diego's past history, says the Dorados assistant press officer. But he's turned out to be completely different. He's identified with a city that people thought would be the death of him. Cool.

Kuliakan is rescuing Maradona in an unimaginable way. And then he dies the next year, age 60. There was a Buenos Aires court case raging over the details of the star's death, which was in fact annulled a couple of weeks ago because the judge appeared in a documentary about it. I'm sure more stuff will come out since I've written this, but...

Let's pay up with something a little bit more celebratory, because honestly, before putting this two part together, I did not know a huge amount about Maradona. And having wasted half my research time watching YouTube videos about his goals. My God, he was incredible. So as much as it pains me as an Englishman and because someone on the YouTube said that I was like, you know.

hurt because of the goal in 86. Here is the goal against us. The goal of the century with the commentary from Uruguayan broadcaster Victor Hugo Morales. Do not Instagram your crimes. ... ... ... ... ... ...

You got that, Ruffin?