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This story originally appeared in the Jackson Free Press. It was added to the Mississippi Free Press website in 2025.
Note that any opinions expressed in legacy Jackson Free Press stories do not reflect a position of the Mississippi Free Press or necessarily of its staff and board members.

When pro soccer makes it in America, hopefully we will have more stories like this one. Yahoo News reports, “Argentinian police are searching for a fake penis used by Diego Maradona to beat drug tests while playing for Napoli in Italy.The fake plastic manhood was filled with ‘clean’ urine to make sure the footballer’s sample was acceptable.The plastic piece was given to a museum in Buenos Aires but disappeared on a countrywide tour.” Wait, it gets worse. “A police source told the (UK’s) Daily Star Sunday: ‘It’s quite an unusual theft but I suppose it is valuable because of its former owner. We’re confident we can sniff it out.’ “

For more on this story, go to Google and type “Diego Maradona fake penis.”

Mississippi native Donna Ladd and partner Todd Stauffer founded the Jackson Free Press in 2002 in the capital city. The heavily awarded local newspaper did many investigations heralded across the state and nation and served as a paper of record due to its diversity, inclusion, in-depth reporting and deep connection to readers and dedication to narrative change in and about Mississippi. In 2022, the nonprofit Mississippi Free Press, founded by Ladd and JFP Associate Publisher Kimberly Griffin in 2020, purchased the journalism assets and archives of the Jackson Free Press. A Google grant through AAN Publishers enabled Newspack's integration of the JFP archives into the Mississippi Free Press website to become part of a more searchable archive of recent Mississippi history and essential journalism.