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Football great Diego Maradona's death on Wednesday triggered an outpouring of emotional tributes in India with the country's cricket chief Sourav Ganguly saying that he has lost his hero.
Maradona, considered the greatest footballer of all time alongside Brazil's Pele, died aged 60 following a cardiac arrest at his home in Argentina, two weeks after undergoing a surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain.
"My hero no more... my mad genius rest in peace... I watched football for you," tweeted Ganguly, a former India captain and the president of the country's cricket board who has always called the Argentinian genius his first sporting hero.
Ganguly played a charity match with Maradona when the football icon visited Kolkata in 2017.
All India Football Federation president Praful Patel called Maradona an invaluable gem. "Diego Maradona was like a magician with the ball at his feet. Football has lost an invaluable gem. His glorious legacy will forever have a place in football history. Rest in peace," he tweeted.
India's men's football team head coach Igor Stimac also paid tribute to Maradona. He posted a photo of himself facing Maradona while playing for Croatia. "Rest in peace, my friend. You are one of the reasons why the world loves the game we have played. We'll miss you... Thank you, Diego," Stimac said.
India and Bengaluru FC goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu tweeted: "RIP Broken heart #Maradona."
Indian cricket great Sachin Tendulkar said: "Football and the world of sports has lost one of its greatest players. Rest in Peace Diego Maradona! You shall be missed."
Maradona visited India three times.
He chose Kolkata for his India debut. In 2008 he turned up in the eastern city to inaugurate a private football academy. But there was frenzy all round.
Thousands flocked to watch him at the Salt Lake Stadium where he figured in an exhibition match, reported Telegraph India.
Journalist Subhankar Mondal wrote in Goal.com: "There was emotion when at the start of the match Maradona ran onto the pitch and did his famous juggling. There was emotion when during half-time some ball-boys rushed to Maradona to touch him.
"Even the players who were participating couldn't resist feeling the emotions and feeling proud at being able to hug the Great Diego."
During that trip, Maradona also met then West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, who was a friend of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. While seeing pictures of the two communists together, Maradona said: "A friend of Fidel Castro is a friend of mine, so Jyoti Basu is my friend too."
The legend returned to India four years later, this time landing in another football-crazy state - Kerala.
He actually celebrated his 52nd birthday in advance there, cutting a huge cake, dancing, trading headers with Indian football legend I.M. Vijayan and kicking balls into the huge crowd from a makeshift stage.
Though the Argentinian had arrived with a capitalist aim - to open a jewellery showroom - Kerala's Marxists queued up in huge numbers to catch a glimpse of the fellow Che Guevara fan in their bastion of Kannur. "RIP God of Football," Vijayan tweeted on Wednesday.
Jeweller Boby Chemmanur, Maradona's host, also got him to wear a chatta and mundu (traditional half-sleeved shirt and white dhoti), reported The Indian Express.
"My biggest pain is that I have lost my dear friend," Mr Chemmanur told a TV channel on Wednesday. "He was not just a footballer, he was the most honest man I have ever come across.
"When I first met him (in Dubai) I had never imagined I could make him the brand ambassador of my jewellery. But I mustered the courage when I realised he was a man with a good heart. I asked him if he would travel to Kerala. He just said: 'Why not?'"
Room No. 309 at Blue Nile, the four-star hotel in Kannur where Maradona stayed, is now a tourist attraction.
The next time India saw Maradona was in 2017, when he visited Kolkata again for a charity event. That time the exhibition match involved Ganguly, who hails from the city.
Sadly, the ageing Maradona didn't last long on the pitch, but fans in West Bengal saw no belly, no out-of-breath kicks and no misstep. They were happy to see their hero in the flesh.
The Argentinian crooned Spanish songs as he sweated it out with a bunch of schoolchildren and bid them adieu with a promise to "bring big-time football" to India.
"I'm here for football. It is a big step that we are taking to uplift football in India," he said about his three-day private trip which was co-sponsored by a local politician, among others.
The major attraction of Maradona's last trip to India was the unveiling of his 3.6m-tall bronze statue at a charity event. It depicted a 25-year-old Maradona, sporting curly locks, and clutching the World Cup trophy he captained his country to in 1986.
A smiling Maradona said: "I am not the god of football but a simple footballer, I'm happy to be in Kolkata. It's amazing to have my statue here."
Maradona had another connection with India. In his 2019 documentary, Indian-origin British filmmaker Asif Kapadia made Maradona his subject.
Titled Diego Maradona, the 130-minute film was culled and put together from more than 500 hours of footage, a lot of which even Maradona was not privy to.
In a telling moment in the film, Maradona says: "When you're on the field, life goes away, the problems go away, everything goes away!"
Indo-Asian News Service
"Diego Maradona was like a magician with the ball at his feet. Football has lost an invaluable gem. His glorious legacy will forever have a place in football history." - India's cricket chief Sourav Ganguly
