In a scene from the Simpsons, Homer and Marge, alongside the better part of Springfield, are sat in church on a Sunday morning. As Reverend Lovejoy begins to deliver a sermon about the sins of gambling and the importance of piety over football, naturally, we see Homer, headphones in, listening to the game. Lovejoy’s sermon begins to sync with the pigskin commentator’s calls. It’s on the twenty, the ten, a final snap; Homer clasps his hands in prayer like the rest of the congregation. As Lovejoy raises his hands in emphasis, Homer’s team converts: “It’s goood!!!” he yells, alarming the congregation and punctuating the mounting tension. For a moment, the Reverend, the congregation, and perhaps even Homer himself can’t quite tell God from football, football from God.

In the new imprint ICONS: A Directory of Canonisations Around the Turn of the Millenium (Edition Patrick Frey, 2024), Zurich-based artist David Diehl explores the para-religious function that soccer has assumed alongside the iconography of sport. Using traditional techniques of oil paint and gold leaf on pine wood, ICONS is the culmination of a seven-year series depicting international soccer stars from Megan Rapinoe to Zinedine Zidane to Cristiano Ronaldo in saintly grandeur. Exploring religion as an aesthetic, Diehl leans into depictions of gilded figures and symbols that for millennia have been intertwined with, and inspired reverence, around the world.

Amongst more than the 70 paintings featured in ICONS, is the twisting story behind Diehl’s portrait of Argentine legend and SSC Napoli star, Diego Maradona. His rise was stratospheric: emerging from an impoverished childhood to hoisting the golden 1986 World Cup trophy, an honorary Golden Ballon d’Or, two Serie A titles. His fall, catastrophic: addiction, an arrest, bankruptcy, and a premature death. Diehl’s portrait of Maradona depicts the Midfielder in a stoic pose, a golden halo emanating from behind his shoulder-length hair. This was not done in parody. Diehl writes, “It was the earnest and authentic expression of what Maradona was: not just another footballer, but a public figure whose sheer intensity and spirit of self-sacrifice—as well as uncontrollability on and off the pitch—meant a lot more to a lot of people than just entertainment. He actually was an icon.”

Unbeknownst to Diehl though, his portrait of Maradona took on a new life after leaving his studio. Bootlegged, recopied, reposted, suddenly Diehl’s work began to spread around the globe, entangled with the collective memory and mythmaking of Maradona himself. “When I put an image out there in the world there’s no way of planning what’ll happen with it in the end,” Diehl notes, adding, “And that’s a good thing. That’s what really interests me: multi-layered ambiguity that allows for a multiplicity of perspectives. This is what my work has always been about.”

As Italian photographer Alessandro Tione documents in the book, Diehl’s rendition of Maradona is now plastered on walls and shops across Naples, the city perhaps most closely connected with his sporting legacy. Posted behind the counter of convenience stores, cafes, and taxis, almost indistinguishable from the fellow gold-adorned saints and deities alongside him—an icon of true excellence. 

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Written by Bennett DiDonna