Diego Maradona: Eight Medical Staff To Be Tried For The Legend's Death

Eight medical personnel are to stand trial accused of criminal negligence in the death of legendary Argentinian footballer Diego Maradona.

No date has been set for the trial of the eight over Maradona's death in 2020, which prosecutors say was due to "omissions" by his caregivers who abandoned him "to his fate" during home hospitalization. Maradona died aged 60 in 2020 while recovering from brain surgery for a blood clot, and after decades of battles with cocaine and alcohol addictions.

Neurosurgeon and family doctor Leopoldo Luque, psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, psychologist Carlos Diaz, medical coordinator Nancy Forlini and four others including nurses were placed under investigation.

Prosecutors have asked that they be tried for negligent homicide.

They claim mismanagement by the team had placed the football legend in a "situation of helplessness."

The accused risk sentences ranging from eight to 25 years in prison.

According to the prosecutors, the defendants "were the protagonists of an unprecedented, totally deficient and reckless hospitalization at home", allegedly responsible for a "series of improvisations, management failures, and shortcomings."

The doctor said he had done "everything he could, up to the impossible".

Diego Maradona is largely considered to be one of the greatest footballers to ever play the game. He was captain when Argentina won the 1986 World Cup, scoring the famous 'Hand of God' goal against England in the quarter-finals.

During the second half of his career, Maradona struggled with cocaine addiction and was banned for 15 months after testing positive for the drug in 1991.

The news of his death threw the football world - and his home country of Argentina - into deep mourning, with many thousands of people queuing for hours to walk by his coffin at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires.

Maradona is widely considered one of the greatest footballers in history.