The former AC Milan midfielder saw Sacchi's Milan develop a very different way of dealing with him.
Maradona was not simply another world-class player to prepare for.
Evani, who came through the AC Milan academy before becoming part of the great side assembled under Silvio Berlusconi, remembers a player whose natural ability made him almost impossible to contain through conventional methods.
"Maradona was a player who could win games on his own," Evani told Football Presse.
"He was one of the strongest players of all time. Despite being less professional than the players I mentioned, he had so much talent that he didn't even need to, in inverted commas, train it.
"He did the minimum necessary to prepare for the game, but then he always arrived with extraordinary quality, class and imagination. It was difficult to stop him."
That presented defenders with a problem that went beyond simply trying to mark a dangerous opponent.
Maradona could create something from almost nothing, meaning the usual answer of assigning one player to him could quickly become a losing battle.
"Initially, we tried to stop him by putting a man on him all over the pitch," Evani said.
"You had to try to stay with him, because he was so dangerous and could make the difference at any moment.
"But then things changed."
The change came with Arrigo Sacchi.
Evani was part of the Milan team that embraced Sacchi's collective approach, with the coach's ideas transforming how the team defended and attacked.
And that transformation also changed how Milan dealt with Maradona.
"When we started playing with Mister Sacchi, nobody was directly concerned with him," Evani explained.
"Nobody had the specific job of following Maradona.
"We got to him through the movement of many players."
For Evani, that collective movement was the key.
"So many times he found himself surrounded by two or three players," he said.
"That was the only way to be able to stop him."
It is one of the clearest examples of what Sacchi's Milan were trying to achieve.
Milan did not attempt to find one defender capable of winning an individual battle against Maradona for 90 minutes. They made the Argentine deal with a team that moved together.
"Maradona was a player who, despite doing less preparation than the others, had so much talent," Evani said.
"He had extraordinary quality and class, and incredible imagination."
That talent meant Milan had to resist the temptation to make the contest about one player against another.
"If you put one man on him all over the pitch, you could try to limit him, but there was always the danger that he could escape you," Evani said.
"With Sacchi, the idea was different. We didn't worry about one player alone. We moved together and, in doing so, he could find himself with two or three players around him."
Evani's memories also offer a fascinating window into the mentality of a Milan team that was learning to defend collectively at a time when Italian football was still heavily associated with individual marking.
The solution to Maradona was not necessarily a better individual defender.
It was better organisation.
"You couldn't just think, 'I'm going to stop Maradona,'" Evani said.
"You had to have the whole team moving, because he had too much quality.
"That was the only way we could really deal with him."
The respect remains obvious.
Evani played alongside Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard and experienced the rise of Milan from a team operating around mid-table to one capable of dominating Italy, Europe and the world.
Yet when he talks about the opponents who could change a match by themselves, Maradona stands apart.
"He could win the game by himself," Evani said.
"That is what made him so difficult. You could prepare for him, you could try to stop him, but then he could produce something that nobody expected."
For Sacchi's Milan, the answer was not to give one player the responsibility of stopping one of football's greatest talents.
It was to make sure Maradona never had to face just one opponent.
"Many times he found himself surrounded by two or three players," Evani recalled.
"That was the only way to be able to stop him."