Hair He Is! Maradona Statue Joins The Perm-ier League
It looks as if Argentine football legend Maradona might just have joined the Perm-ier League with this bafflingly awful new bust of the soccer giant.
The statue – unveiled before the COTIF youth cup match in L’Alcudia, in the Valencia region- shows the star with the dodgiest football hair-do since Kevin Keegan’s perm.
The bust shows the Hand-of-God star with a strange puffed-up bouffant while he wears a sky-coloured shirt.
With Argentina’s team in the tournament, the country’s FA president Claudio Tapia was on hand to help unveil the new tribute on 1st August.
Spanish-language media are reporting that the work will appear in all future COTIF tournaments as a welcome for each of the participating teams.
But the statue – by Spanish artist Rafa Ferri – has provoked ridicule on social media.
And fans have been less happy with the work showing Maradona, who died of a heart attack two years ago.
Some netizens compared it to Ecce Mono, the botched restoration of a c. 1930 fresco depicting Jesus by untrained amateur artist Cecilia Gimenez in 2012.
Others said it reminded them of the widely ridiculed bronze bust of Cristiano Ronaldo by sculptor Emanuel Santos that was unveiled at Madeira Airport in 2017.
Twitter user ‘DF Costelloe’ simply said: “If that’s a statue of Maradona, I’ll eat my shoe!”