Buenos Aires - “Diego was always asking me for help. He was afraid of everything. He would tell me, 'Take me with you.'” the heartbreaking words of Veronica Ojeda, former partner of Diego Armando Maradona and mother of his last child, Diego Fernando, shook the ninth hearing of the trial on the death of the Pibe de Oro.
The woman, in tears, retraced the last days of the former champion's life, pointing the finger without hesitation at the medical team that was supposed to take care of him. According to Ojeda, Maradona was “seized” in his last weeks of life.
After a rapprochement in 2020, which began at the urging of a masseur (“you're the only one who can save him”), the woman says she witnessed a rapid worsening of Diego's psycho-physical conditions, in particular after the surgery at the Olivos Clinic and the subsequent home hospitalization: “They told us it would be like being in the hospital, but it wasn’t like that.”
Veronica described two visits. The first, serene, with a Diego “still lucid, happy to play with his son.” But the second one, the 23th November 2020, two days before his death, was devastating: “I found him alone, swollen, disfigured. A bodyguard and a nurse were reading in the living room. I asked him, 'What happened to you?'”
Also in the classroom Mario Schiter, a cardiologist who treated Maradona in Cuba in 2000, and participated in the autopsy requested by Claudia Villafañe, another ex-wife of El Diez. Schiter criticized the choice of home treatment: "It was a risky solution. Diego was not an easy patient, he needed a protected structure, not an apartment."
The trial is becoming more and more heated, with testimonies that cast new shadows on the last period of life of one of the most beloved – and controversial – icons in the history of football. Between tears, anger and words that weigh like boulders, we are now looking for a truth that will finally do justice to Diego Armando Maradona.
Article published on 9 April 2025 - 11:33
It's sad to hear these words from Veronica Ojeda, who talks about Diego and how bad he was. I don't know how all this could have happened and how the doctors didn't do more. A truly difficult situation for everyone.