Hype and despair

Published on Saturday 15 November 2008 18:50

FROM HIS position at the other end of the pitch, George Wood could just about make out a stocky, almost squat, figure taking possession of the ball close to his own penalty area. Through the haze of a sunlit Saturday afternoon, he watched as the player took out one opponent, then "kept coming, again and again", until finally, with a trail of Scots in his wake, he confronted the last obstacle in his path. The goalkeeper at Hampden on that summer's day 29 years ago still remembe

Determined to narrow the angle, Wood was quickly out at the feet of Diego Maradona, forcing him wide, and to the bye-line, where the youngster was heavy with his next touch. "As he chased the ball, I got up and ran back to the goal, but when I threw myself towards the near post, thinking he would nick it into the net, he just put his foot on the ball. Then, with me on the ground, he still didn't put it in. He waited till I dived again, before rolling it past me. He was just so confident. It was like a matador playing with a bull. He basically took the piss. Instead of scoring when he had the chance, he did me three or four times. But I wasn't the only one that day."

Maradona, just 18, embarrassed the lot of them in Argentina's 3-1 triumph. By the time Wood had entered the fray, a half-time substitute for Alan Rough, his team-mates' pride had already been dented. John Wark, confounded once too often by the cocky teenager, had said during the interval that it was time to start kicking him. "They tried, but it didn't work," says Wood. "He was so strong and well-balanced, you couldn't get near him. Think of the players they had: Passarella, Kempes, guys who had won the World Cup only the year before. And yet, the only one we were talking about in the dressing room afterwards was this cheeky git called Maradona. You knew he was something special."

That was his first goal at international level. When Argentina visit the same venue later this week, it will be his first match as manager. The symmetry is not lost on Wood, who will be among the many in Glasgow on Wednesday night, hoping to catch a glimpse on their doorstep of a 20th century icon. The Scottish Football Association, inundated with media requests to cover the match, has extended its press gantry in order to accommodate the 500 journalists who have been granted accreditation. They could have filled it three times over. From Di Stefano to Zidane, Hampden has played host to its share of heroes, but Maradona will be something else again, even if he is only on the touchline.

For the man they call Argentina's salvation, hype has long been a way of life. At the age of nine, he was juggling a ball on television. His professional debut, for Argentinos Juniors in 1976, came 10 days short of his 16th birthday. Feted as the only footballer who could single-handedly win his team the World Cup, as he appeared to do in 1986, his strength, touch and speed with the ball at his feet came to be viewed as a gift from God. Tens of thousands worship at the so-called Church of Maradona, which claims to have 100,000 members. Jimmy Burns, who wrote a celebrated biography of the player, says his funeral will be as big as Evita's.

Hampden, then, will be a circus on Wednesday night, but not necessarily for the right reasons. These days, there is a lurid fascination not so much with what Maradona can achieve, but with the freak show that his life has become. The kind of idolatry to which no mortal soul should be subjected has served to deny him any concept of the outside world or the laws that govern it. Apart from the cheating – and there was plenty of it, from the serial drug offences to the Hand of God with which he denied Terry Butcher's England in 1986 – there has been a trail of destruction in his personal life, a tale of prostitutes, betrayed loved ones, and links with the Italian mafia. An alarming deterioration in his health manifested itself in drug-induced heart attacks, a hepatitis scare that had him on his death bed and a bloated figure, now squeezed, mercifully, by his stapled stomach.

Once a little devil, he is now a monster, fed by his own legend. The questionable values with which he grew up in Villa Fiorito, a crime-ridden neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, were exacerbated by the company he would later keep. Francisco Cornejo, the trainer who is credited with discovering him at the age of eight, said: "People describe Diego as rude, bad-mannered and defensive, but that was after the money came and he changed. As a little boy, he was so quiet. You had to prompt him to speak."

His life and work has been one long cocktail of cortisone and cocaine, taken either to maximise his talents, or to find refuge from the watching world. Scrutiny hasn't just exposed his dark side, it has compounded it, as he once demonstrated by shooting air pellets at a pack of slavering press hounds. Protected by a sycophantic entourage of yes-men and hangers-on, he has long since lost sight of the difference between right and wrong.

The fear is that management could be his latest mistake. There have been suggestions that his appointment was recommended by the Argentine government in an effort to transform the national mood. And Julio Grondona, president of the country's football association, hasn't been in the job 29 years without pulling a few stunts. "Whatever money they make off Maradona, Grondona and his friends will keep it for themselves," says Raul Gomez, former president of the Buenos Aires club, Velez Sarsfield.

Even those who idolise him fear the worst. An opinion poll by Clarin, Argentina's largest newspaper, found 74% of nearly 50,000 voters opposed to his appointment. Maradona's coaching experience extends only as far as brief spells more than a decade ago with Racing Club, where he won two of his 11 matches, and Deportivo Mandiyu, where he triumphed in one out of 12. Why expose their hero to the prospect of ridicule when Carlos Bianchi, with four domestic titles to his name, was the outstanding candidate?

Thrust into the international dugout with limited coaching experience, great players rarely make great managers. Franz Beckenbauer and Mario Zagallo, who won World Cups on either side of the touchline, were exceptions to the rule. Those blessed with a more subtle form of genius struggle to teach that which came naturally, as Michel Platini discovered with France. Maradona's volatile temperament complicates the task, just as Hristo Stoichkov's did during three years with Bulgaria. Two captains refused to play for the self-styled "red hot chilli pepper" , who quit after failing to qualify for Euro 2008.

Maradona needs his director of football, Carlos Bilardo, that's for sure, although it won't be long before they, too, have fallen out. It has happened before. In his autobiography, he calls the 1986 World Cup-winning coach "a f***ing mother***er" . He is also determined to have as one of his assistants the thuggish Oscar Ruggeri, who seems to be no more subtle in the dugout than he was on the pitch, failing at almost every coaching opportunity.

Maradona has a handful of rare talents at his disposal, including Atletico Madrid striker Sergio Aguero, by whom his daughter, Giannini, is pregnant. Aguero, Carlos Tevez, Javier Mascherano and Lionel Messi represent an embarrassment of riches, but if Argentina are to restore their former glories, they will need more than just inspiration from the dugout. Wood, now a goalkeeping coach at Hartlepool, wonders if even that is destined to be short-lived. "I have no doubt, in the first few matches, they will play for him because of who he is, but the test will be once the honeymoon period is over."

Maradona doesn't even entertain the notion of failure. As always, he believes in himself, insisting now that he is in a better place, managing the national team to which he has always been devoted. "It's like touching heaven with my hands," he says. The game gave birth to a god at Hampden. His resurrection could be more tricky.