"This is the first academic book in English to closely examine the life of Diego Maradona from socio-cultural perspectives, exploring how his status as an icon, a popular sporting hero and a political figurehead have been culturally constructed, reproduced, and manipulated. The book looks at representations of Maradona across a wide variety of media, including literature, cinema, popular music, printed and online press, and radio, and in different countries around the world, to cast new light on topics such as the instrumentality of sporting heroes and the links between sport, nationalism and ideology. It shows how the life of Maradona - from his origins in the barrio through to his rise to god-like status in Naples and as a postcolonial symbol of courage and resistance against imperial powers across the global south, alongside scandal and his fall from grace - powerfully illustrates themes such as the dynamics of gender, justice and affect that underpin the study of sport, culture and society. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in football, sport studies, media studies, cultural studies or sociology"--