Alternate History: Diego Maradona comes to MLS

Major League Soccer is often criticized for being something of a “retirement league.” This reputation is somewhat earned, thanks in large part to its early history, as burgeoning American clubs sought to inflate their popularity by trotting out the bloated corpses of Lotthar Mattheus, Roberto Donadoni, and Carlos Valderrama.

Fast forward to the Year of Our Lord 2025, and Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, and countless others are enjoying warm-weather quasi-retirement in a country that’s slightly less soccer-obsessed than whence they came.

The number of soccer legends who have plied their trade on our sunny shores, even if for only a short while, is seemingly infinite.

However, as I tear up listening to Rodrigo’s La Mano de Dios on Spotify for the millionth time, I can’t help but feel like ONE NAME in particular is missing. What would have happened if Diego Armando Maradona, the mystifying and mercurial gem of a player and disaster of a person, had made the leap to play in the newly-founded Major League Soccer?

The timing would have been difficult, but not impossible. The NASL folded in 1985 and left an eleven year gap in the history of top-flight American soccer. But as a condition for hosting the 1994 World Cup, MLS was more or less announced in 1993.

During this time period, Maradona was serving a 15-month ban from soccer for having tested positive for cocaine in 1992 while playing for Napoli. After spending a solitary season at Sevilla, he ostensibly played in Argentina from 1993 until his retirement in 1997, but during that time period he made only 35 appearance between Newell’s Old Boys and Boca Juniors.

What likely made a move to MLS more difficult was the 1994 World Cup. He was banned after only two games after having failed a drug test. He tried to claim that FIFA had approved his use of ephedrine for weight-loss purposes, but his appeals failed and he was kicked out of the tournament. What’s most shocking to me, however, is that Maradona somehow ended his international career with fewer than one hundred appearances for Argentina.

According to some sources, Maradona conflated his experience at USA ‘94 with the United States in general, effectively souring on the North American nation.

But a likelier explanation is that his personal life and fitness habits by the time he was 36 years old would have made a move to Major League Soccer all but untenable.

Our closest analog to Maradona, a great player who also happened to be afflicted with the disease of addiction and who ALSO happened to come to North America to play soccer is one George Best.

Best, a Northern Irish attacker famed for his time winning trophies at Manchester United, claimed that his move to the Los Angeles Aztecs of the NASL in 1976 was in part due to the anonymity that living in the US would provide him. He was a prolific drinker and philanderer, as well as a favorite target of the tabloids in England, but claimed to love being able to live a somewhat normal life in sunny LA. His later move to the Fort Lauderdale Strikers gave him more of the same.

Maradona, on the other hand, seemed to actively seek out the spotlight wherever he went. Even his adorable old parents became Argentinean celebrities. He palled around with the likes of Fidel Castro, Freddy Mercury, and the Camorra crime family of southern Italy. So where in MLS would he have chosen to go? Certainly one of New York, Los Angeles, or the Miami Fusion (who joined as an expansion team in 1998 but wouldn’t have been an option straight away). It also stands to reason that he would have been much more famous to the casual person on the street, given his World Cup-winning credentials, and the large Hispanic diaspora populations of New York, Southern California, and Florida.

George Best’s time in NASL seems to have done him good both on the pitch and in his personal life. He scored 33 goals across 73 appearances in the league, and according to his manager at the LA Aztecs, Terry Fisher, only ever missed two training sessions during his time there. He really seemed to view his move across the pond as an opportunity to reset his life, even speaking about enjoying soccer again now that the pressure of representing a super-club like Manchester United wasn’t weighing him down.

Maradona would have scored goals in buckets if he would have played in early MLS, that much is obvious. But is there any way he would have motivated himself properly to get back to his highest levels? We can’t really say that he’d been under any sort of pressure, at least when it came to his soccer performances. By the mid-nineties he’d won almost everything there is to win, having captained Argentina to a World Cup title, humiliating geopolitical rivals England along the way, and he’d broken the northern Italian stranglehold on the scudetto, bringing the title home to Napoli for the first time in the club’s history in 1987. Whatever pressure Maradona faced surely would have been off the pitch, given his history of tabloid flings, drug abuse, and fathering illegitimate children.

Here it’s interesting to consider the case of Lionel Messi, another Argentine superstar in the twilight of his career, having already won everything under the sun. How on earth does the guy manage to stay motivated? He seems to be possessed with an almost superhuman gift for competitive motivation. He just plain hates losing, and will jaw at referees he deems inept after, say, a humid draw against Eastern Conference bottom-dwellers in July. The thrill of goal-scoring never seems to leave him, even if he’s playing in a competition that he probably only learned existed the day before. Last year’s playoff loss to Atlanta clearly still weighs on his mind, and he treated this season’s first meeting with the Five Stripes as a matter of personal revenge.

Messi’s life outside of soccer runs almost completely in contrast to Maradona’s and Best’s. His persona is famously boring: he’s got a beautiful wife who he’s known since childhood and three sons who all act appropriately clownish on his social media pages. After more than twenty years in the public eye, he’s only had a smattering of vague controversies: a conviction for tax evasion in Spain (that may be down to overly complicated tax law and enthusiastic prosecutors rather than any willful deceit) and signing on as a spokesperson for the Saudi Board of Tourism.

We must consider that Messi’s on-field performance and penchant for always being switched on is a product of his curated personal life. He loves his Argentine teammates, even going so far as to ice out guys who don’t gel well with the group (cough Mauro Icardo cough). Inter Miami Sporting Director Raul Sanllehi was reportedly demoted after running afoul of Messi vis-a-vis transfer policy. Messi famously has a bodyguard that won’t let anyone near him for selfies.

Messi embodies the words of famed French novelist Gustave Flaubert when he said “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Best, it seems, enjoyed this type of lifestyle reset at the beginning of his NASL career, but the demons of the past were dogged and never let him out of their sight.

It seems unthinkable that Maradona would have enjoyed the type of tranquility and order necessary in his personal life to be able to thrive in North America. He seemed to have been more motivated by proving doubters wrong than consistently performing well in the vacuum-like conditions of the football pitch for 90 minutes. It certainly would have been entertaining, and there would have been moments of glory. Maybe he would have landed in the right situation and strung together enough positive results to lift MLS Cup. There were, of course, only ten teams in the league in 1996!

But fans, teammates, and coaches alike would’ve been treated to the full Diego Armando Maradona Experience. Great promises, great personality, mercurial skill, but ultimately disappointment, and, despite all the excellent moments, a bitter taste in your mouth.