One of Diego Maradona’s two teenage daughters said on television that her father was doing ”much better” a week after he was hospitalised in intensive care for serious heart and lung problems.
Appearing on a United States TV network late on Sunday, Dalma Maradona said her father — the former Argentine soccer star — was still under sedation but his condition had improved from laast weekend and that family members took it as a good sign that a respirator had been removed for the second time.
”I am relieved and pleased because, while this process is going to be slow, one can say things are now better. They are much better compared with the day when he was admitted,” the 17-year-old said.
Maradona won Argentina the 1986 World Cup title, his goal-scoring prowess placing him among the all-time greats of the sport. Get-well messages have poured in from around the world since the 43-year-old soccer idol was admitted on April 18 to a private hospital with heart inflammation and a lung infection.
Doctors said Sunday his condition had ”stabilised” and that they had taken him off a respirator for the second time in three days.
It was his second major hospitalisation for heart problems since January 2000.
Interviewed at her Buenos Aires home, Dalma twice fought off tears as she spoke of how Maradona fell ill while watching a Boca Juniors league game on April 18. He was admitted that Sunday to the private Suizo Argentina Clinic with a fever and chest pains.
”It really surprised me because he was well until this happened,” she said. ”At the stadium he started to feel bad.”
She said that she and her sister Gianinna (14) had been spending a great deal of time at his bedside, along with their mother Claudia, Maradona’s former wife.
”Only my sister, my mother and I have access to him,” she told the interviewer, Luis Majul. ”We hold him by the hand. He’s sleeping; he doesn’t hear us.”
A statement by his medical team on Sunday said Maradona had been taken off a respirator and that he was ”no longer suffering from a fever, and his heart is functioning well with medication”.
Doctors have said repeatedly in their daily medical updates that Maradona’s prognosis remains guarded and on Saturday said future progress would be ”slow and laborious”.
Heading into the second week of Maradona’s hospitalisation, a small group of fans remained camped overnight outside the clinic, some lighting candles before hundreds of messages, posters and sporting memorabilia taped to the walls.
One poster read: ”The Hand of God in the hands of God” and others ”Be strong, Diego!”. Some fans of the former soccer great left poems, old photographs of Maradona in his playing heyday when he wore Argentina’s famous number 10 — and banners sporting the blue and yellow of his Argentine club, Boca Juniors.
Maradona is best known for his ”Hand of God” goal in which he punched the ball into the net against England in the quarterfinals of the 1986 World Cup tournament. The goal helped Argentina reach the title that year.
In his 20-year career, Maradona won Italian and Argentine league titles, and led Argentina to the World Cup final in 1990. In 2000, Fifa chose Maradona as the game’s best player to date, alongside Brazil’s Pele. Off field, drug and medical problems also brought him less savoury attention.
Maradona was suspended from the Italian league’s Napoli in 1991 for 15 months following a positive test for cocaine. Three years later, Fifa suspended him for 15 months for a positive test at the World Cup finals in the US.
Maradona retired from professional soccer in 1997.
In January 2000, Maradona was hospitalised while vacationing in the Uruguayan resort city of Punta del Este. At the time, he was diagnosed with a severe heart condition. He late moved to Cuba to under go drug rehabilitation. — Sapa-AP