Diego Maradona's Final Days: A Harrowing Testimony
Diego Maradona lay in his final days swollen, bedridden and seemingly resigned, a far cry from the defiant genius who once bent World Cups to his will.
That stark image emerged in an Argentinian courtroom on Thursday, as Nicolas Taffarel, Maradona’s personal masseur, delivered harrowing testimony in the trial examining the circumstances of the icon’s death in 2020.
“He wouldn’t get out of bed, he didn’t want to eat, he didn’t want to wash, he didn’t want to look after his personal hygiene,” Taffarel told the court, his voice breaking as he described the decline of the man he had worked with so closely.
A desperate warning, unanswered
Taffarel said he had raised the alarm with Maradona’s medical team, urging them to increase their presence around the 1986 World Cup winner. In an audio message played in court, he recounted telling them they needed to visit “every day”.
“I reported the issues I observed with him, but I saw no concrete action or swift resolution,” he said, close to tears as he remembered those final days.
The picture he drew was of a body visibly failing.
“He was bloated, his legs were swollen,” Taffarel recalled. He explained that when he voiced his fears, the doctors tried to soothe him. They told him to calm down, that the symptoms would pass. He wanted to believe them.
“When you’re anxious, you put your trust in them; you tell yourself it will pass, that everything will sort itself out. But it didn’t pass.”
Two weeks earlier, Maradona had undergone surgery. On November 25, 2020, he died alone in bed at the age of 60, from heart failure and acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid in the lungs.
“Nothing, that’s it”
The eve of his death still haunts the masseur. On November 24, Taffarel tried to rouse Maradona, to coax even a small response from a man who once lived on adrenaline and attention.
He described how he attempted to persuade him to sit up and drink mate, the traditional herbal infusion that had accompanied so many of Maradona’s days.
“He said to me: ‘I don’t want anything, Taffita, that’s it.’ I asked him: ‘What do you mean, that’s it?’ and he replied: ‘Nothing, that’s it’.”
Those last words hang over the trial. In Spanish, “ya está” can mean “it’s all right” or “it’s over”. The court is now weighing whether they were the weary mutterings of a man exhausted by life, or the warning sign of someone being failed by those meant to protect him.
Seven on trial, a nation watching
Seven healthcare professionals are in the dock, accused of potential negligence that may have contributed to Maradona’s death. The trial, which began in mid-April, has gripped Argentina, a country that still treats Maradona as a secular saint and a mirror of its own contradictions.
The defendants face up to 25 years in prison if found guilty. They deny any responsibility. Most have leaned on the narrowness of their roles, arguing that their specific specialisms had no direct link to the clinical causes of death.
They insist they did not abandon him. The testimony from inside the house suggests a different kind of isolation.
The legal process is complex and slow, and the court has already been warned that the trial could stretch beyond this month. Each new witness peels back another layer of those chaotic, contested final days.
In the middle of it all stands the enduring image painted by Taffarel: Diego Maradona, once the beating heart of world football, lying in bed, swollen, silent, and saying, “That’s it.” Whether Argentina’s justice system decides that was the end of a natural decline or the result of fatal failings in his care will define how his final chapter is officially written.
