When I was 10, I went on a summer football camp. Camp Aldenham it was called.

One afternoon, it chucked it down with rain, so they took us inside to watch a video. Hero: the official film of the 1986 World Cup.

It's still maybe the greatest football film ever made.

Rick Wakeman's soundtrack was extraordinarily vivid and sits in my mind to this very day. Michael Caine's narration was, um, linguistically questionable, but still somehow fit perfectly.

And then there was the film's main subject. Diego Armando Maradona, captain of Argentina.

Every time he was featured on screen, every boy around me yelled "CHEAT! CHEAT! CHEAT!" Children behaving like obnoxious philistines.

I was the only one who just sat transfixed, in awe of the man. Because he was a genius, who towered light years above his contemporaries.

Football is the greatest sport in the world because football is the game of the people. And it retains, even now, the capacity to move entire nations from triumph to despair. It's even the only thing that can get commuters on the London Underground to actually talk to each other!

And Maradona, arguably its greatest exponent ever? The point is: HE was a man of the people. Truly, of the people. Born into such hideous, unimaginable poverty, he even fell into a septic tank as a young child. Can you imagine the lifelong trauma of that?

That poor background meant, of course, he was totally ill-prepared for the global superstardom which would come his way - and for the distractions and temptations this brought too.

Yet the pressure he was under, with both club and country, was unimaginable.

How does someone handle the hopes, dreams, expectations, demands of all their compatriots and of the success-starved, so often mistreated people of Naples?

Answer: by playing like THIS. Watch this video. It'll blow your mind.

He played like that for week after week, year after year, taking Napoli to undreamt of heights in what was, by far, the highest quality domestic league there's ever been.

He played like that despite receiving no protection from referees either.

This was a completely different world to now. Red cards were very rare; yellow cards were handed out far, far less. So defenders spent their time trying to cut him in half... and in Spain, the hideous Andoni Goikoetxea did just that.

That was in 1983. That Maradona came back and rose to such exalted heights in the years that followed was such a tribute to him. Not just his genius, but his courage.

Meanwhile, his national team was just 9 minutes from NOT EVEN QUALIFYING for the World Cup.

It featured two very good players - the two Jorges, Valdano and Burruchaga - and frankly, not a great deal else. But superman that he was, Maradona dragged that entire side up multiple levels through sheer force of personality.

Every opponent Argentina faced was terrified of him

Every opponent Argentina faced could feel his personality, his charisma, all over the pitch. And this was despite Argentina's central defence being fragile, vulnerable, there for the taking even.

Yet none of Uruguay, England or West Germany got at them until it was too late.

All three of them were beaten mentally as much as anything else; beaten before the games even began in many ways. Again, that was Maradona's impact. Germany even sacrificed their best player, Lothar Matthaus, in the final, for a man-marking job on El Diego.

Maradona, like only Muhammad Ali had done before him, transcended his whole sport and impacted massively on the world. The Hand of God *was* about revenge for the Malvinas; and his first and second goals that day summed up the paradox of Argentinian football like nothing ever has

Goal 1: the malign. Viveza criolla. Craftiness and cunning. You're a fool if you get caught. You're immortal if you get away with it.

Goal 2: the sublime. Maybe the most beautiful goal ever scored by anyone - on a pitch so bad, so bumpy, it should've been impossible.

True: the English defence, noted an Italian journalist, was "like a man who'd just had his wallet stolen". But we were so defensive, negative and cynical until falling two goals down that we unquestionably got what we deserved.

And Maradona scored another insane, jawdropping goal in the semis v Belgium in any case.

In the whole history of football's greatest tournament, no man has come closer to winning it BY HIMSELF than Maradona did in 1986. His impact was absurd.

Then, for good measure, a well past his best and barely 50% fit Diego dragged a bunch of streetfighters and journeymen all the way back to the final four years later. His through ball to Claudio Caniggia against Brazil defied gravity itself.

Many Argentinians still celebrate the 1990 team even more than the 1986 one. What it did was impossible. Ludicrous. Mad. It should've gone out in the first round; it ended up beaten in the final by a non-penalty (albeit, it had it coming: so negative, it was unbelievable).

Diego, meanwhile, so upset his hosts with his comments before the semi-final - "Neapolitans are treated like shit for 364 days of the year. Now you're expected to support Italy?", or words to that effect - that Argentina's elimination of Italy meant he was a marked man.

The authorities stopped protecting him and moved in. And by and large, he was finished: with such a sad, ending at the 1994 World Cup... where his eyeballs-out into-the-camera celebration v Greece practically told the whole world he was high as a kite.

But this was always a man of deep, deep contradictions. He could be a quite horrible arsehole. He could also be - and most of the time, was - a kind, massive-hearted man who adored his people and his country... and who stood up against greed and corruption, always.

Many on the left will remember him warmly for that. Not for Maradona the path of being a corporate beyond belief sell-out like Pele, or the disgusting support for Jair Bolsonaro from the likes of Ronaldinho, Rivaldo, Kaka and Cafu.

Maradona never forgot where he was from.

That's why he was, and will always be, so revered at Boca Juniors - another club of the people, in theory if not always in practice - and Napoli. And indeed, by football lovers around the world.

60 is no age at all. But like many other geniuses, Maradona always found life much, much more challenging than his chosen sport. George Best, Alex Higgins, Paul Gascoigne or Garrincha, among many others, would have sympathised.

Diego's country, for whom he was an idol like no other, is in shock today. The whole footballing world, likewise.

There will never be another football to compare with Diego Armando Maradona. The joy he brought so many is incomparable.

I would say "rest in peace", but that's to completely miss the point.

Rest in Power, Sir - and raise merry hell while you're at it. He was a rebel. He rocked the boat. He did it his way. And he moved billions along the way.

Gracias y adiós, leyenda absoluta.