Gianinna, a daughter of Diego Maradona, was interviewed on Tuesday at the trial into the circumstances of the football legend's death in 2020. She denounced a "total and horrible manipulation" of the family by the medical team. Tried in San Isidro for potentially fatal negligence, seven practitioners face up to 25 years in prison.

Published on: 04/22/2026 - 01:29 Modified on: 04/22/2026 - 01:32

New trial, new stories from the family. More than once moved to tears, one of Diego Maradona's daughters, Gianinna, denounced, Tuesday April 21, at the trial into the circumstances of her father's death in 2020, a "total and horrible manipulation" of the family by the medical team then surrounding the Argentine football legend, in the last weeks of his life.

“The manipulation was total and horrible, I feel like an idiot,” declared Gianinna, 36, especially targeting three of the seven practitioners (doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, nurses) tried in San Isidro, near Buenos Aires in Argentina, for potentially fatal negligence.

“I trusted these three people, and all they did was manipulate us, and leave my son without a grandfather,” she told the audience. Describing a home hospitalization which, according to her, lacked everything “what they had promised us”: 24-hour surveillance of Diego, “medical equipment, ambulance at the door, qualified professionals”.

Maradona died at age 60 of a cardiorespiratory crisis and pulmonary edema, alone on his bed in a rented residence, where he was convalescing, after uncomplicated neurosurgery three weeks earlier.

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“They were the ones responsible”

Among the accused, Gianinna singled out Leopoldo Luque, a neurosurgeon by profession but considered the personal doctor, at least the one closest to Maradona towards the end of his life, as well as the psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov and the psychologist specializing in addictions Carlos Diaz.

She did not go into detail about the "manipulation" she was denouncing, but described a general atmosphere, where the family, in particular her and her older sister Dalma, felt under-informed, even kept aside.

“They were the ones in charge, those who had established how things should happen” after the operation. “We asked them the questions, they answered if they had spoken with” the healthcare provider company. “They were the ones guiding us, his children, to know how to continue,” Gianinna continued.

“They told us that it was important that we give him space, that he can decide if he needs to see someone. That we don't put pressure on him,” she recalled. “Beyond what they were saying with us, they had another strategy in parallel,” she denounced without elaborating on a purpose, a motive.

Read alsoDeath of Maradona: the prosecutor denounces “an assassination” during the first day of the trial

But she reacted strongly when audio messages were broadcast in which members of the medical team appeared to discuss how to protect themselves legally in the event of complications in Maradona's health.

“I never would have imagined that they were already thinking about how to cover themselves (...) it really makes me angry to hear that,” Gianinna hissed.

Emotion and pain

Several times in a deposition of approximately six hours, the daughter of “D10S” (for “God” and “N.10”) was overtaken by emotion, her voice broken or in tears, and even had to interrupt herself and leave the room for a moment.

Like when she recounted her emergency arrival on the day her father died, when the paramedics told her that “there was nothing they could do” to resuscitate him. And that the body, swollen abdomen, marked by attempts at resuscitation, was “unrecognizable”.

And as in the first aborted trial, in 2025, Gianinna repeated her pain. "There wasn't a single day I went to bed without asking him to take me with him. I didn't want to live anymore," she said. “I had to see a psychiatrist, be medicated.”

A new trial

The accused plead a natural death for Maradona, worn out by many pathologies, particularly cardiac, and with a history of addiction. They deny all responsibility, hiding behind their specialty, a role segmented around it, de facto passing the responsibility onto others.

They face between 8 and 25 years in prison.

A first trial in 2025 was canceled, after more than 20 hearings spread over two and a half months, in a context of scandal: one of the three judges, without everyone's knowledge, collaborated in the production of a documentary series on the case, with herself starring.

She was impeached, and the second trial is presided over by a new trio of judges. At the rate of two hearings per week, it could stretch until July.

With AFP

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