Italians mourn death of Diego Maradona, the 'naughty rascal' of Naples

The city where the Argentinian turned a football team into winners shows its affection

Although his body is about 7,000 miles away from Naples, the wake for Diego Maradona in his adopted southern Italian city began on Wednesday and will continue throughout Thursday, after the mayor officially proclaimed a day of mourning for the death of the “greatest player of all time”.

This is not the only initiative that the town has in store to celebrate Maradona, who died on Wednesday of a heart attack in a house outside Buenos Aires where he was recovering from a brain operation.

The mayor, Luigi de Magistris, also proposed renaming the San Paolo stadium, home of the Napoli football team, after its legendary player. “I ask that our stadium, which has witnessed so many of his successes, bear his name. It will be called the Diego Armando Maradona. The people want it. They spoke unanimously,” he said.

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The management of SCC Naples have agreed and the official announcement could arrive in the next few days.

But the greatest demonstration of the love and respect of the city towards the Argentine champion was thousands of mourners, minutes after the news of the footballer’s death was announced, taking to the streets to commemorate their adopted king of Naples.

“Tonight a piece of Naples has died forever,” said Antonio Esposito as he stared through his tears at the 6-metre (20ft) mural of Maradona overlooking his local piazza in the city’s Spanish quarter.

Esposito was surrounded by families with young children and groups of friends dressed in SSC Napoli’s club tracksuits, holding candles and taking videos, intermittently erupting into collective song and loud outpourings of grief. “It’s too sad for words, it’s just too sad,” said Esposito, who is the piazza’s informal custodian and set up a projector showing Maradona’s glory moments over and over to the crowd.