When winning the Best Foreign Language Film for The Great Beauty, in 2013, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino thanked the footballer Maradona, who played an important part in his life.
He said: “Aside from all the things I’ve said before about Maradona, he involuntarily saved my life. I lost my parents when I was 16, in an accident with the heating system in a house in the mountains where I always used to go to with them. That weekend, I didn’t go because I wanted to watch Maradona and S.S.C Napoli play a match in Empoli, and that saved me. That’s the main reason. But Americans don’t know much about soccer, even my American casting agent didn’t know who Maradona was.
