BUENOS AIRES – Diego Maradona has offered a $10,000 reward to identify thesource of reports he had died after Argentina’s World Cup match againstNigeria, his lawyer said Thursday.
The reports, circulated via WhatsApp voice messages from a man with anArgentine accent, said the 57-year-old star had been hospitalized and haddied of cardiac arrest.
“I gave instructions to make public the decision to offer a reward of300,000 pesos (around $10,000) to anyone who can provide true and accurateinformation about the author of the audios,” lawyer Matias Morla toldArgentina’s Clarin daily from Russia.
The Argentine star took ill at the end of the match and had to be helpedfrom his seat.
But he denied rumors of ill health the day after, telling reporters: “I’mperfect. I’ve never been better.”
Morla said Maradona had suffered “a spike” in blood pressure.
“It’s a subject that at one time alarmed him. It’s no secret how he livesthrough a game. How he lived them as a player is how he lives them as afan.”
According to Morla, Maradona shouldn’t even have been at the stadium forthe second half of the game, in which a late goal secured Argentina’s WorldCup.
“The doctors told him to rest, not to stay for the second half of theArgentina-Nigeria match, but asking that of Maradona is like asking a sonnot to love his mother.”
“For Diego, the team is Dona Tota (his mother), and he will never let heron her own,” he said.
The audio messages spread on social media after the match.
“Maradona’s sisters heard the news, they could not communicate with me norwith their brother, and one of them suffered a weakness, and the truth isthat we cannot let such an outrage go by,” Morla told Clarin. – APP/AFP