Maradona, his brother Hugo died: he was 52 years old, he had remained to live in Naples

Hugo Maradona, Diego’s younger brother, died in Naples of a heart attack

He leaves on a sunny morning in December in Monte di Procida, a few steps from the sea from the coastal Naples he had loved following his older brother Diego. Hugo Maradona died this morning at the age of 52, killed by a heart attack that hit him in his home. Diego’s younger brother leaves a year after the family champion, who a few weeks ago he also celebrated in Naples with the blue club that today remembered him on his website. He, Maradona junior, had lived a good relationship with his brother, but inevitably in the shadow cast by Diego’s talent. He grew up in the fields in Argentina before landing in Naples in 1987, when at 18 he played only one game with the blue shirt before going on loan to Ascoli, and then to Rapid Vienna and Rayo Vallecano.

A midfielder, Hugo Maradona, who also put his talent on the pitch against Diego, as Ascoli recalls by posting on their website a photo of Hugo chasing the Pibe on the pitch in a Napoli-Ascoli. “He had played – writes the Juventus club – in Serie A with Ilario Castagner’s Ascoli in the 1987-88 season and formed the foreign couple with Walter Junior Casagrande. There are 19 appearances in the black and white jersey, of which 6 in the Italian Cup” . After playing football, Hugo Maradona began to love the job of coaching kids, with a football school.

Then he also worked as the club technician of the amateur series of Campania. Meanwhile, a life had started for him in Naples, indeed, near the Neapolitan sea, in Monte di Procida, where in 2016 he married his second wife, Paola, while the three children of their first marriage have been living in the USA for some time now. “Bacoli – writes Josi Della Ragione, mayor of Bacoli – clings to the pain of the Maradona family, for the death of dear Hugo. I hug his wife, Paola. They had chosen to live in our land. In Miliscola, on the border between Bacoli and Monte Procida. I had the honor, and the pleasure, of celebrating their civil wedding. It was an exciting and happy day. I will remember Hugo’s simplicity. He was always among the people.

And he had become a son of the Phlegraean community. “With him in the house of Hugo also the mayor of Monte di Procida, Giuseppe Pugliese: the two first citizens are also preparing an event to remember him. Hugo Maradona had remained tied to the city that was It was Diego’s. At the last municipal councils it was hypothesized that he would be nominated on a center-right civic list, then nothing was done about it also due to the bureaucratic problems that had slowed down his request for Italian citizenship. In recent weeks he had been invited by the club blue at the stadium for the evening dedicated to the tour of the Pibe statue in memory of a year of his death. He was with his wife, he had spent time with Cannavaro, he had enjoyed the evening remembering his brother. Now he too is leaving.