In a different timeline, Japanese soccer would have been driven into the professional era not by Zico’s Kashima Antlers, but by Diego Maradona’s Nagoya Grampus Eight.
Instead of “The House That Zico Built” nestled in the backwaters of Ibaraki Prefecture, perhaps Toyota Stadium, which Grampus has called home since 2001, might be known as “The House of God” in honor of one of the greatest players the beautiful game has ever seen.
That is, of course, not how things came to pass. While Maradona, who died Wednesday of heart failure at the age of 60, never suited up for a J. League club (though his younger brother Hugo did, for Avispa Fukuoka and Consadole Sapporo in the mid-1990s), his legacy has repeatedly touched these shores and lives on through generations of fans and players who had the fortune to encounter him at his peak.