DOHA – Two years ago, the world of soccer suffered one of its worst blows when the death of Diego Maradona was known. At the age of 60, the former captain of the National Team suffered a cardiorespiratory failure while recovering from an operation at his house in Tigre. Since that November 25, 2020, thousands of tributes have been made: from movies and series to murals and dedications all over the world.
Today, in the middle of the World Cup in Qatar, an exhibition that started in Argentina also remembers him. This is the Tango D10S, a plane stored in a hangar at Hamad International Airport, in the capital Doha.
One of the people behind the Tango D10S sample is Maximiliano Gallo, who lived with Maradona for a few years while the then DT was in Dubai. In an interview with LA NACION, Gallo explained how the project came about and what the objective is: “The idea came from Gastón Kolker -CEO of the company Give and Get- who put together a plane for Diego Maradona with his images and called me because I had the opportunity to meet, live and work with Diego”.
He assures that at the end of the show “they will auction and donate the proceeds to a charity” and that they have “all the support of the heirs” of the former captain, always a point of conflict in each tribute that revolves around the world with his figure.
Gallo says that in the brand new hangar, next to the airport runway, there is the largest collection of t-shirts worn by Maradona in the world and that the experience includes different “immersive” activities to interact with Maradona: you can leave a message or even talk to him through a hologram.
“There are around 450 t-shirts that are owned by some friends who have the largest collection of t-shirts and they offered to come to Qatar,” Gallo said, adding: “We are collecting the messages in all the places where the plane stops, these They are going to be compacted into two hard disks, they are going to put some booties inside and they are going to be sent to orbit space”. A way to go to meet the “cosmic kite”.
The Tango D10S exhibition brings together objects from different personalities who knew the greatest Argentine soccer player. There is, for example, an Andrés Calamaro guitar, Mike Tyson gloves, an Adolfo Cambiaso helmet, a Gisela Dulko racket, and teammates’ and different players’ shirts. The ultimate goal is to collect the largest number of objects, according to the organizers, and then auction them off and donate them to a “charity”.
In that sense, Gallo commented that the maintenance cost of the plane and the exhibition in Qatar is “extremely high”, and that this is because they have “40 people working” and that although they have an “accessible” entrance for the version World Cup (about 60 dollars), there is also another ticket that costs 350 dollars and that includes “food and a visit to see Diego’s 12 best shirts.”
Link with Maradona
“I met Diego in 2006, from the hand of Héctor ‘Negro’ Enrique, of whom I am a friend and partner. He took me to eat a barbecue where Maradona was, and I couldn’t believe it,” Gallo recalled and explained that from that day a “very nice relationship” began in which they did “a lot of things”, like traveling all over the world by your side.
For this reason, he says that he still regrets the death of the idol, of which today marks the second anniversary. “It happens to me that every morning I get up and think that they are going to say that it is a lie, because for me it was like a superhero. ‘Diego is alive’ I thought they were going to say at some point. But it did not happen and it will not happen and unfortunately it makes me very sad, “he lamented.
In turn, and with a different tone, he ironized about what Maradona would tell him if he saw the museum they set up in Doha and for that he recalled an anecdote with him: “I have a complex of soccer fields with ‘Black’ Enrique. One day Diego came to visit us, he put his hand on top of the man and told me: ‘sons of bitches, what a bank they messed up’ “.
Maradonian experience
For the organizers, this exhibition at the Doha airport is a unique collection that should be visited by anyone who perceives himself as a Maradonian, since it is a way of interacting with Diego, even if it is digitally through an intelligence artificial developed in Hollywood to replicate the body of people in the form of a hologram.
“There are many people in the world who wanted to talk to Diego and don’t know all the shirts we have here,” Gallo stressed. “We have shirts from when Diego was youth champion in 1979, from Napoli when he won the first scudetto, other shirts from the Argentine National Team. Maradona breathes here. Not only the Maradonians, the soccer people come here and get excited, ”he sentenced.