Not Walking the Walk

HAVANA — In the two weeks since Diego Maradona checked into a $350-a-night villa at La Pradera Spa to kick his cocaine habit, the 40-year-old Argentine soccer legend has:

* Dyed his hair shock orange.

* Punched out the car window of a Reuters photographer, spraying his face with glass.

* Pelted a television crew with a water balloon and strutted up to the soaked camera lens, filling it with his bare, bulging belly.

All of which has left many here and in the soccer world wondering just what sort of detox program the fallen star is undergoing.

Theoretically, it’s one of the best.

Although little-known in the United States, Cuba’s health-tourism industry has a reputation that rivals that of Maradona during the stellar years of his career--which ended with two 15-month drug suspensions in the 1990s and retirement in 1997.

Specializing in an array of therapies--from biological restoration and neurological rehabilitation to stress regulation and dream alteration--Cuba’s cutting-edge treatment centers have drawn hundreds of thousands of well-heeled patients from Europe, Latin America and Asia.

But for Maradona--who has a large blue portrait of a fellow Argentine, guerrilla fighter Ernesto “Che” Guevara, tattooed on his right biceps--there was another attraction to rehab in Communist-run Cuba. As he proudly bared his tattoo at the Havana airport on arrival, the surprisingly corpulent Maradona told reporters that he and Cuba’s aging President Fidel Castro have long admired one another.

And soon after Maradona took up residence at the government’s sprawling and exclusive La Pradera Spa, the 73-year-old Castro visited him--a 20-minute tete-a-tete that Maradona later said had boosted his damaged heart’s performance from 50% to 100%.

Spa sources say, however, that Maradona has done little related to his treatments, which may account for some of his behavior last week.

The scene at La Pradera’s well-guarded front gate more than likely accounts for the rest. That’s where the paparazzi now reside.

Each morning, half a dozen photographers from Argentina and elsewhere stake out the spa’s driveway, waiting for a chance to follow Maradona, his wife, parents and manager, who are staying with him during a treatment program expected to last three months.

It was during one such excursion last week to a local market that Maradona smashed the car window of a news-agency photographer. It’s unclear what provoked the attack, which came two days after Maradona water-ballooned a Reuters television crew that had checked into a room at the spa to monitor his treatment.

Journalists had been forewarned by the man whose career bridged continents and electrified his sport at one time. After meeting with Castro on Jan. 23, Maradona had pleaded with journalists to leave him alone.

“We need peace,” he said. “I especially need peace.”

His doctors agree. Maradona’s cocaine addiction, which has spawned an aggressive anti-drug campaign in Argentina, not only has damaged his heart but may have affected his mind, according to Dr. Alfredo Cahe. In a recent interview with the French magazine Paris Match, Cahe, one of Maradona’s physicians, said he was concerned about his patient’s “neuropsychiatric state.”

Still, it’s Maradona’s heart that the doctor said worried him most. And commenting about an invitation from Castro to Maradona to seek treatment in Cuba before the former star decided to come here, the doctor praised the island’s drug-therapy centers as some of the world’s “most important.”

Cahe also stressed: “It is fundamental that he is not treated as a star, as the No. 1.”