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Wed in Diego's holy place

DPA, MEXICO CITY
Sunday, Oct 21, 2007, Page 19

The "passion for Diego" - Argentine football legend Diego Armando Maradona - will soon take two Mexican couples to the altar of a church devoted to the player in Buenos Aires, as part of an international movement that worships the former player as "the god of football."

Football fan and groom-to-be Adrian Gonzalez stressed that the non-legally-binding wedding is symbolic.

"We are going to promise each other eternal love with our feet on the ball, and then we will say some vows," he explained.

After the wedding, he said, the couple will try to watch a football game between Boca Juniors and Velez Sarsfield for the Argentine tournament, and go on a 17-day honeymoon.

He "asked me to marry him in the Maradonian Church, now that passion for Diego has united us," his fiancee, Olivia Pozos, said.

Pozos, 22, comes from the Mexican city of Xalapa, in the state of Veracruz, but is currently living in Buenos Aires on a student exchange.

The woman, who is an electronic engineering student, said she and Gonzalez, 25, who works for a communications company back in Xalapa, got in touch with the Maradonian Church and set their wedding date for Oct. 29.

"We are very excited waiting for the big night," Pozos said.

The couple is set to marry in Buenos Aires, like their friends Emma Trujillo, 22, and Mario Martinez, 24, who are also from Xalapa, a beautiful city enclosed by mountains some 430km east of Mexico City.

Pozos explained that her fiance is "a great fan of football, especially of Diego Maradona." After listening to him talk about the game, she said, she entered "a world that she really did not know."

"Everything that surrounds Diego is spectacular. In order to understand a bit of that magic that emanates from him, the first thing I saw was the best goal in history, that goal that Adrian always tells me was 'a dream' in the 1986 World Cup (in Mexico) against the England team," Pozos noted.

She said learning the importance of that goal made her "understand the reason behind all the display of love for 'The 10' (as Maradona is known after his jersey number).

Pozos underlined her happiness at being in Buenos Aires, visiting the humble Boca neighborhood with its peculiar "taste of football." The experience, she said, made her "remember everything that (Adrian) said about Diego and his beloved team, Boca Juniors."

"An unexpected day in August, talking over the Internet, (Gonzalez) proposed to me and asked me to marry him in the Maradonian Church," she recalled.

She added that they find it "difficult" to talk to relatives and friends about their wedding, because many find it zany.

"It is hard to make people understand, and much more difficult to demand tolerance. They do not understand that sometimes football can unite people," she said.

When they return to Mexico, both couples have plans to get legally married, with Catholic and civil ceremonies.

The congregation of Maradonian Church consists mostly of fans of the talented former player and was established in 1998. According to its own records, it has more than 80,000 members in 60 countries.
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