Scotland v Argentina: DIEGO MARADONA took a World Cup semi-final place from England in 1986 and yesterday he took the urine. Argentina's new head coach told his audience in Glasgow it was hypocritical of the English to vilify him for the Hand of God when Alf Ramsey's side had bent the rules to win their own World Cup at Wembley two decades earlier. A warm reception is expected for the 48-year-old when he steps into international management against Scotland tonight.
Maradona's accusation was delivered with mirth rather than menace as he held his first besieged official press conference since being unveiled as the surprise successor to Alfio Basile earlier this month. His first game brings him into confrontation with Terry Butcher, the Scotland assistant manager who was part of the England team beaten by Maradona's duplicity and brilliance in Mexico 22 years ago and who this week expressed a lingering wish to punch the former Argentina captain for that infamous first goal.
"I don't know why Butcher is taking this attitude," said Maradona, rolling his eyes and feigning hurt when informed by a translator that George Burley's number two will not be shaking his hand at Hampden Park. "I am fine with people who are fine with me and I don't understand why Butcher takes this attitude. Let Butcher get on with his life and I will get on with mine. If he doesn't shake my hand I will still be alive the next morning. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it."
A female journalist then asked whether he would not feel resentment at being cheated out of a World Cup quarter-final. Maradona paused, then smiled, then drew a parallel between the Hand of God and Geoff Hurst's second goal against West Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final. "I say to the young lady, England won a World Cup with a goal that never crossed the line. It was plain to everyone who saw it that it never went in, so I don't think it's fair everyone should judge me when stuff like that went on." Warming to his theme, Maradona held his hands a foot apart and added: "It was this much before the line. They just never used to have action replays in those days."
England-baiting aside, there was a seriousness to Maradona's address befitting a man with his troubled history and a manager who, prior to taking on the role of leading one of international football's superpowers, had overseen just 23 games from the sidelines as coach of Textil Mandiyu and Racing Club in the mid-1990s. The legendary player dismissed the suggestion he has plenty to prove as coach of an Argentina side that has won only one of its last eight matches and lost its last World Cup qualifying game to Chile.
"I don't feel under pressure at all," said Maradona, who will work alongside his World Cup-winning coach, Carlos Bilardo, in the national set-up. "If I hadn't accepted the offer I would have been a coward and I didn't want to shy away from the challenge. We have a long, hard road ahead of us, it is not going to be easy, but the Argentinian national team needed someone to guide and help them and now we are on a mission together."
Inexperience is not the only charge levelled against Maradona since his appointment, with his temperament also on trial. As a player he blamed a failed drugs test at the 1994 World Cup on a Fifa-led conspiracy to hound him from the game, while his cheerleading displays at the 2006 World Cup in Germany are clearly ill-suited to the technical area.
"I am the manager of Argentina now and I'm not going to get involved in anything like that," he said of football's politics. "As for the touchline, it depends on how the team are playing. If they are making me feel safe and sound then I'll be fine. If they are making me nervy then maybe I will behave like you saw in Germany."
Maradona scored his first international goal against Scotland at Hampden Park in 1979 and flirted with the possibility of one day managing in Britain. He also rebutted the theory that great players do not make great coaches. "Cruyff showed inhis time with Barcelona, with what he achieved there, that that can be the case," he reasoned.
It was when asked to describe his personal journey, one that has entailed cocaine addiction and a fight for his life in a Cuban clinic as a guest of Fidel Castro, that Maradona gave the shortest reply. "I get up every morning, simple as that," he said. "I get up every morning."
