Diego Maradona's Final Days: Masseur's Testimony at Trial

Diego Maradona spent his final days bedridden, bloated and seemingly resigned to the end, according to stark testimony from his personal masseur at the trial examining the circumstances of his death.

Nicolas Taffarel, who worked closely with the Argentinian icon, painted a bleak picture in court of a man who had stopped fighting.

“Diego wouldn’t get out of bed, he didn’t want to eat, he didn’t want to wash, he didn’t want to look after his personal hygiene,” Taffarel told the judges on Thursday, his voice cracking as he relived those final hours.

A Warning That Went Unheeded

Taffarel said he had raised the alarm with Maradona’s medical team, urging them to be more present and to visit the 1986 World Cup winner “every day”. An audio message he sent at the time was played in court, underscoring his concern.

“I reported the issues I observed with him, but I saw no concrete action or swift resolution,” he said, close to tears as he described a patient he believed was slipping away.

“He was bloated, his legs were swollen,” Taffarel recalled. The signs were there. He insists he saw them. The response, he suggested, never matched the urgency.

“The doctors told me to calm down, that these symptoms would pass. When you’re anxious, you put your trust in them; you tell yourself it will pass, that everything will sort itself out. But it didn’t pass.”

Those words hung over the courtroom, heavy with regret.

“Nothing, That’s It”

On November 24, the day before Maradona died, Taffarel made one last attempt to stir something in him. He tried to coax him out of bed, to share mate, the herbal drink woven into Argentina’s daily life and rituals.

“He said to me: ‘I don’t want anything, Taffita, that’s it,’” Taffarel testified. “I asked him: ‘What do you mean, that’s it?’ and he replied: ‘Nothing, that’s it’.”

In Spanish, “ya está” can mean “it’s all right” or “it’s over”. Taffarel told the court he heard it as something final, a phrase that now feels like a farewell.

The next day, Maradona died alone in bed at the age of 60. The official cause: heart failure and acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid in the lungs. His death came just two weeks after he had undergone surgery.

Seven in the Dock

Seven healthcare professionals are on trial in Argentina, accused of possible negligence that may have contributed to Maradona’s death. They face potential sentences of up to 25 years in prison.

All of them deny responsibility. Most have leaned on their specialisms and the limits of their roles, arguing they had no direct link to the clinical causes of death and therefore cannot be held criminally liable.

The court will decide whether this was a tragic but unavoidable end for a man whose body had been battered for decades, or a preventable death shaped by misjudgment and inaction.

The trial, which began in mid-April, is expected to stretch beyond this month. In Argentina, where Maradona’s name still carries the weight of a nation’s dreams, the question now is not just how he lived, but who must answer for the way he died.