A new criminal trial opened in Argentina this week to determine whether Diego Maradona, one of football's most celebrated figures, died due to the negligence of the health professionals responsible for his care. Seven defendants — four doctors, two nurses and a psychologist — face charges of homicide with eventual intent at the courts of San Isidro, a suburb of Buenos Aires. If convicted, they could face sentences of between 8 and 25 years in prison.

Maradona died on 25 November 2020, aged 60, at a house in a gated community in Tigre, Buenos Aires province, where he had been placed under home care following brain surgery to treat a subdural hematoma. He was 60 years old. The immediate cause of death was cardiac arrest and pulmonary edema, compounded by a range of serious underlying conditions including chronic kidney disease, cirrhosis, respiratory failure and addiction. According to a medical board that reviewed the case, Maradona showed "unequivocal signs of prolonged agony" and had effectively begun dying at least 12 hours before his death was recorded. Prosecutor Patricio Ferrari was unsparing in his opening statement, describing the defendants as "a band of amateurs" who acted with "criminal indifference" and did nothing to save their patient. "If any one of them had thought to transfer him to a clinic, it would have saved his life," he said. Fernando Burlando, the lawyer representing Maradona's daughters Dalma and Gianinna, went further: "Diego Maradona was murdered."

This is the second attempt to bring the case to trial. The first process, which had already held more than 20 hearings and heard over 40 witnesses, was annulled after it emerged that one of the presiding judges, Julieta Makintach, had been secretly filming the proceedings with the intention of starring in a documentary about the case — without the consent of any of the parties involved. Makintach was removed from office, and the entire process was invalidated. The retrial begins from scratch under three new judges: Alberto Gaig, Alberto Ortolani and Pablo Rolón. The chief defendants are neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque, psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov and psychologist Carlos Díaz, alongside nurses Ricardo Almirón and Mariano Perroni and doctors Pedro Di Spagna and Nancy Forlini.

The intervening year has allowed defence teams to refine their strategies, and early hearings have already revealed significant shifts. Luque surprised the court by choosing to testify for the first time, declaring his innocence and disputing the prosecution's account of a prolonged agony, suggesting instead that Maradona died from an unforeseen heart attack. He also sought to distance himself from the home care arrangement. "I was not in charge of the home care," he insisted. Notably, Luque has added a new lawyer to his defence team: Francisco Oneto, who is also the personal attorney of President Javier Milei. The defence teams broadly argue that the homicide charge is excessive and that their clients fulfilled their professional duties. Cosachov's lawyer contended that if nurses failed to properly monitor and record the patient's vital signs, doctors cannot be held responsible for decisions based on faulty data — while the nurses' representatives countered that they were simply following medical instructions.

The retrial is expected to run for at least three months, meeting twice weekly, with more than 120 witnesses scheduled to appear. The case has gripped Argentina and much of the football world since Maradona's death, raising fundamental questions about standards of care, professional accountability and the circumstances surrounding the final weeks of one of sport's most iconic figures.