A new trial opened in Argentina on Tuesday to determine whether seven members of Diego Maradona's medical team were criminally responsible for the football legend's death in November 2020, more than a year after the original proceedings collapsed in scandal. The case, heard before a criminal tribunal in San Isidro — a suburb north of Buenos Aires — will call roughly 120 witnesses and is expected to conclude by July.
Maradona, widely regarded as one of the greatest footballers in history and a co-winner of FIFA's Player of the Century award alongside Brazil's Pelé, died on 25 November 2020 at the age of 60. He suffered respiratory failure and cardiac arrest while recovering from brain surgery at a private residence in the Buenos Aires suburb of Tigre. Prosecutors allege that four doctors, two nurses and a psychologist provided care that was "inadequate, deficient and reckless", leaving Maradona in a state of "abandonment" despite his already fragile health — a condition complicated by chronic kidney disease, cirrhosis, heart failure, neurological deterioration and longstanding addictions. The seven defendants face charges of negligent homicide carrying sentences of between eight and 25 years in prison; all have denied wrongdoing, maintaining that Maradona died of natural causes.
The heaviest accusations fall on neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque, who performed brain surgery on Maradona to treat a subdural haematoma and subsequently recommended home convalescence in a residence prosecutors say lacked the minimum conditions required for post-operative care, and psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, who is accused of administering contraindicated medication and failing to personally attempt resuscitation despite being the only doctor present when Maradona was found unconscious. Other defendants are alleged to have ignored medical protocols, concealed the patient's true condition from his family and failed to arrange appropriate institutional care.
The first trial, which began in March 2025 and had already heard more than 20 sessions of testimony — including emotional statements from Maradona's children — was annulled in May 2025 after it emerged that judge Julieta Makintach had been secretly filmed for a documentary series inside the courtroom and her own office, a serious breach of judicial rules. The revelation was described by lawyers as a "global embarrassment." Makintach was subsequently impeached and permanently barred from holding judicial office. Because the annulment wiped the entire record clean, all testimony, evidence and arguments must now be presented from scratch before a new three-judge panel.
The case carries profound emotional weight in Argentina, where news of Maradona's death in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic drew hundreds of thousands of mourners into the streets. Beyond his turbulent personal life — marked by cocaine and alcohol dependency and his connections to criminal circles in Naples, where he played in the 1980s — Maradona remains a near-mythical figure, immortalised above all by his two goals against England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final: the infamous "Hand of God" and a sweeping solo run now routinely described as the greatest goal ever scored. For many Argentines, the question of who, if anyone, bears legal responsibility for his death remains unfinished business.