Diego maradona

In Messi’s triumph, Maradona gets the funeral he deserved

Argentine soccer legend Diego Armando Maradona died in 2020, at that time still the last man to lead his nation’s team to a World Cup championship. On Sunday, in some sense Maradona passed away again, as Lionel Messi lifted the golden trophy and his own legacy as not only the greatest Argentine player of all time, but possibly the greatest to ever lace up boots in the world. Tuesday has been declared a national bank holiday in the South American nation, not that anyone there has stopped partying since the famous win on Sunday. The heroes' welcome will be for this band of players, especially Messi, who snapped the thirty-six-year World Cup drought. But make no mistake, the image of Maradona will also be on display far and wide.

lionel messi maradona

Naples and nurture

The climactic scene in the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, The Hand of God, finds the teenaged Sorrentino stand-in, Fabietto, being verbally attacked by an aging director named Capuano, the seaside at their backs. At this point in the film, the young Fabietto (Filippo Scotti), a sullen mama’s boy searching for meaning, has suffered an immense tragedy and is looking for answers. Enter the wise man. The scene, like many in The Hand of God, is on the nose and borders on the melodramatic, but when Capuano (Ciro Capano) yells “how does this city not inspire you?” at Fabietto, he reveals the film’s emotional core. The Hand of God, like Sorrentino’s previous work, is highly stylized and aesthetically beautiful — a true visual feast.

hand of god