Maradona in China: when Deng Xiaoping invited him to play in Beijing and footballer turned the Chinese leader down

Deng Xiaoping invited the Argentinian in 1987, but Maradona would not come unless he got 300 million lira, about US$230,000 at the time, according to a source

Chinese fans across the country are mourning the death of the ‘king of football’, with the topic generating more than 1.5 billion views on Weibo already

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Diego Maradona attends a charity football match at the Jinan Olympic Sports Centre on November 5, 2010 in Jinan, China. He was a frequent visitor to the country, but turned down an offer in 1987 from Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to play there, according to former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 6:47pm, 26 Nov 2020Updated: 6:47pm, 26 Nov 2020

Like those elsewhere, Chinese football fans are mourning the death of Argentinian soccer icon Diego Maradona, who was widely known as one of the greatest players of the game – not least to late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

Deng, who led China from 1978 until 1989, once invited Maradona to play in China. The offer was conveyed in 1987 during a business meeting between China’s state-owned Citic Group and former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, then the head of Italy’s state-run Institute for Industrial Reconstruction.

Deng said that if Maradona – who was playing for the Italian club Napoli at the time – came to China, “he would play in Beijing Stadium and 600 million people would watch the game on television”. That’s according to Prodi, who recounted to the South China Morning Post in 2019 that a Citic executive told him that.

But Maradona was unmoved by the proposal, saying that he would not come unless Beijing paid him 300 million lira, roughly equivalent to US$230,000 at the time.

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