"The truth is that Argentinos was just the backdrop for that match, we went to see Talleres," recounts Juan Carlos Mena to EFE, a sports journalist who was present at 'Pelusa's' debut and who has lived just two blocks from that stadium for a few years now, located in the La Paternal neighborhood in Buenos Aires.
Mena and other members of the prestigious Argentine sports weekly El Gráfico had attended that Wednesday afternoon to watch the Córdoba team, which was the sensation of the tournament, but something changed with the start of the second half when Juan Carlos Montes, coach of Argentinos Juniors, replaced Rubén Giacobetti with a teenager in the number 16 jersey whose uniform was too big for him.
"There was a sun that was killing you in the stands. This young dark-skinned guy with curls didn't even cast a shadow on the field, but I clearly remember that the first ball that came to him, he stopped with his chest and, stepping on it forward, he made a nutmeg on the opponent who had come to corner him," Mena recounts, adding that at that moment some of the 7,000 attendees realized they had seen him before.
In the years leading up to his debut, while playing for the 'Los Cebollitas' team in children's tournaments in Buenos Aires, Maradona would appear during halftime of Argentinos Juniors matches to entertain the crowd with his exquisite ball control, which he would juggle on his head for minutes like a juggler.
Héctor Vega Onesime, who was in charge of El Gráfico at that time, was also at that match against Talleres and, when asked by EFE about his memories of that day, responds by dusting off the comment he published about the performance of that young debutant, whom he rated seven out of ten.
"Even the inclusion of the surprising, skillful, and intelligent former 'Cebollita' Maradona was not enough to solve the problem," wrote Vega Onesime, perhaps unaware that he was signing the first of millions of pages dedicated to the Argentine star.
