I was the ‘New Maradona’ who flopped at Chelsea – and this is the rollercoaster career that followedI was the ‘New Maradona’ who flopped at Chelsea – and this is the rollercoaster career that followed
I was the ‘New Maradona’ who flopped at Chelsea – and this is the rollercoaster career that followed | Getty Images
Franco di Santo was once dubbed the ‘New Maradona’ - but what happened to him, and how do lawsuits and spiders come into his story?
In January 2008, the ‘New Maradona’ arrived at Chelsea. He had been scoring goals for fun with Audax Italiano in Chile, stood at a powerful 6’4” and at just 18 years of age seemed to be set for stardom. But Franco Di Santo wasn’t destined for the top – or at least, not for any length of time.
Now 35, it’s been a little over a year since he last played football, presumably ending a strange career which saw him struggle disastrously at a number of clubs, succeed admirably at others, and often left under a cloud. 13 teams and eight countries later, this is how his career unravelled.
The rise and fall (and rise and fall) of another New Maradona
Di Santo was one of many New Maradonas, of course. Prior to the emergence of Lionel Messi as a new national hero, just about every attacking player who emerged from Argentina with a whiff of promise about them was earmarked as the great man’s successor, but few ever lived up to their billing. Some New Maradonas, such as Pablo Aimar and Juan Roman Riquelme, carved out successful careers on their own terms. Others, like Di Santo, experienced it more like an albatross around their neck.
A run of 12 goals in 17 games established the 18-year-old’s Di Santo’s reputation in Chile and Chelsea, well on their way to adopting the cosmopolitan and free-spending approach to youth recruitment that would be turbocharged by Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali years later, the Blues splashed out £3.4m – a hefty sum for a teenager at the time.
Between the fee and the Maradona comparisons (which weren’t backed up in terms of playing style in any way given that Di Santo was a lofty number nine rather than a nimble winger), expectations were set pretty high. To say he never lived up to them would be fair, but his career wasn’t a simple downhill slope – every time he was in danger of being written off for good, he would hit a sudden peak which convinced everyone that he was on the way back up. Then he would slide back down it again.
Di Santo never scored a competitive goal for Chelsea, although he did get an FA Cup winner’s medal in 2009. A loan spell at Blackburn Rovers in 2009/10 was only fractionally more productive – across a whole season, the striker scored just one goal, a header into an empty net from a few yards out, albeit one that came against Blackburn’s hated local rivals Burnley, earning him something that might be called cult status if you squinted very carefully at it.
The lack of goals persuaded Chelsea to cut their losses and sell Di Santo to Wigan Athletic for £2m – not great for the balance sheet, but still not a bad fee for a striker who had scored one goal in 40 games in England. Things didn’t get much better in Lancashire, however, and he finished his third season in the Premier League with one solitary goal as well. It all looked rather bleak for a striker who seemed to be a step off the pace and level of technical skill required in the top flight.
Then, a sudden step forward, at least to a certain distance. Di Santo started to adjust and started scoring a little more often. Seven goals in 2011/12 and then five in 2012/13. Not stellar numbers, perhaps, but he did at least take part in Wigan’s extraordinary run to the FA Cup trophy, albeit without getting on the score-sheet, and picked up the first of his three Argentina caps. Di Santo’s memories of his time with Wigan admittedly seem to be a little hazy in places.
“I think I did a good job,” he told Goal in 2021. “In my last season, I was the top scorer in the team and we won the FA Cup as a small team. I was happy with my work in England.”
He wasn’t the top scorer in the team – four players managed more goals, led by Arouna Koné who bagged more than twice as many – and nor did he do a good enough job for Wigan to keep him around. In 2013, he was released on a free transfer having been forced to quit Twitter in the wake of abuse he received after posting an apparent countdown to his departure.
A similar sort of pattern marked his time with Werder Bremen, where he went next. A bad, goal-shy start before he suddenly started scoring enough goals to earn a call-up to Argentina’s provisional World Cup squad in 2014, narrowly missing out on the final selection. Just when it all seemed to be going well, however, he forced a sudden move to rivals Schalke, upsetting fans and causing a Bremen director to say he was “anything but impressed” by Di Santo’s handling of the situation.
He would later demonstrate a certain obliviousness to the backlash surrounding the way he left Bremen, telling the press a few years later that he would like to go back to help his former club after they were relegated to the German second tier… Sporting director Frank Baumann told the media that he wasn’t interested.
How Di Santo’s career slowly fizzled out
It's around this time that Di Santo’s flashes of quality started to fizzle out. His final season in Bremen, when he scored 13 times, would prove to be a career high point that he never reached again.
Having forced a move to Schalke, he managed just five goals in 71 games in the league and is largely remembered for the time that he terrified teenage team-mate Leroy Sané by picking a spider up off the pitch and dropping it down his shirt during a break in play. Next, he was off to Rayo Vallecano, where he failed to score a single goal in just six appearances. He would never taste a ‘Big Five’ league again.
Since then, he’s been a wandering gun for hire, albeit one that didn’t hit the target all that often. Three goals in Brazil with Atlético Mineiro. Three in Turkey with Göztepe. Two in Mexico with Tijuana. The New Maradona become the Old Di Santo without getting many fans all that excited.
At least he continued to find ways to leave clubs under chaotic circumstances. When he left Argentine side San Lorenzo in 2021, it was claimed in the Argentine media that he unilaterally terminated his contract because the club wasn’t paying him his wages. A similar thing happened in 2024 with Independiente Rivadivia, but the circumstances were even stranger.
Having signed for the Primera Division minnows after a brief second stint in Chile, Di Santo managed just 52 minutes of football, “barely touched the ball” (according to his hometown newspaper the Mendoza Post) and missed a penalty. His manager refused to select him, a stormy meeting with the team management followed and he was released before launching a lawsuit for the equivalent of around £50,000 in unpaid wages.
11 months later and Di Santo has showed no signs of returning to football. His Instagram account (Wigan fans seem to have let him keep that for now) implies that we won’t see him back on the pitch again – and if that’s the case, then the New Maradona will end his career with 75 goals in 433 appearances for clubs around the globe, two FA Cups, three international caps (no goals) and a habit of frustrating fans of the clubs he left. And he may have given Leroy Sané arachnophobia – and there are few players who can say that.
Related topics:ChelseaWigan Athletic
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