THE NEWS THAT Diego Maradona is set to take over as the new coach of the Argentina football team is the kind you feel is hardly news at all. Maradona as Argentina coach? You mean he wasn't already? It seems so obvious you almost feel cheated by the announcement. We're talking about the country's most famous soccer player, after all, the man who captained his national team to victory in the 1986 World Cup, scoring what has since been voted the goal of the century against England - the same match in which he also got away with what was probably the century's most controversial. That he has been nominated the Argentina coach seems little wonder, really. That he's still alive is surely the real story here.
For no one has courted death like this cheeky upstart from the slums, whose indulgences - drugs, alcohol and plenty of steak - have become almost as famous as his sporting achievements. From his ejection from the 1994 World Cup for the use of ephedrine, through stints in Cuba to treat a cocaine addiction, his attraction to excess kept him in the headlines long after his soccer star had waned. It has also taken a serious toll on his health, landing him in a Uruguayan hospital in 2000 after a cocaine overdose led to cardiac arrest, and back in hospital in his native Buenos Aires in 2004 where, as he put it, he "stared death in the face".
Not many come back from a face-off with the grim reaper, but there was no besting Diego. One stomach staple later, he was back, looking trimmer than ever and hosting his own show on Argentinian television, where he interviewed Fidel Castro, Pele and Robbie Williams. That was before the alcoholic hepatitis, though, which had him back in hospital last year for almost three weeks, which was before they decided to make him coach of the national team. Put like that, his new job title does seem a little less obvious.
So the new Argentina coach is a one-time drug-addicted alcoholic whose sporting achievements were clouded in doping disgraces and a dodgy goal that he admitted later he had deliberately punched into the net as revenge for the Falklands war? No wonder the players themselves are a little sceptical about this new appointment, with striker Carlos Tevez pointing out Maradona will "have to think more with his head than his heart now that he's the coach, something that, knowing him, he's going to find difficult".
But why is everyone else so forgiving? What is it that appeals about a short-arsed, ageing sports star that so seduces us time and again that we overlook the drug habits, the paternity suits, the ridiculous posturing and political pronouncements, not to mention the gleeful, barefaced lies? Afraid I can't answer that myself. The truth is I'm as smitten as the next guy, as I embarrassingly found out when I came face-to-face with the man who first introduced my 12-year-old self to the grace in the beautiful game.
Never meet your heroes, as the cliche goes. Not, it turns out, because they'll let you down, but because you're more likely to make an almighty gombeen out of yourself and be unable to tell what would have been a perfectly good, clangingly name-dropping yarn without revealing yourself as a star-struck dimwit in the process. There I was, being cool and unflappable at a party with Bono (what? I warned you there would be name-dropping) and co after a concert they played in my former home of Buenos Aires. But U2 are not the point, as everyone in the country has a Bono story these days. Besides, I was attempting to appear blasé as I hung around the fringes trying to affect the slightly bored look of someone whose life was only chockers with star-studded parties and free champagne.
And then in walks Maradona. Reader, I vaulted furniture, and several members of our heretofore studiously ignored premier rock band to get to him. Bulldozing my way through party guests and straight through Maradona's own daughter (the shame), I finally arrived breathless at his side with absolutely nothing to say for myself. Which unfortunately didn't stop me from speaking, as I proceeded with the worst kind of garbled sycophancy while I pumped the hand of God like a Duracell bunny.
Fair play to Diego, though, he indulged me with grinning grace and even obliged for a few photos before I finally let the hand, and the gentleman attached, return to the party (though not before noting I was near to looking down on him, despite the fact that I clock in at 5ft 3in whereas he officially has two inches on me at 5ft 5in.
The point, I suppose, is that even though he's an acknowledged cheat and a liar with an ego the size of the Bombanera stadium, when it comes to Maradona, many people - myself and the Argentina Football Association at least - are, like the man himself, governed by their hearts rather than their heads. It's worth remembering, too, that sometimes, as in the case of that glorious run around five English outfielders and past Peter Shilton in 1986, it's the logic-defying behaviour that pays off.
fionamccann@irish-times.ie
Shane Hegarty is on leave