Maradona and Me

Diego Maradona was 40 days older than me but I have to admit he was a much better footballer than I ever was. Where he had speed and trickery I lolloped much like a lazy gazelle. Where he had style and stocky strength I wilted like a schoolgirl experiencing her first romantic rejection. Where he had guile and exquisite skill I possessed all the physical and mental agility of a slow-worm on ketamine.

I offered football what Hale and Pace had offered comedy: mediocrity and the unfailing ability not to impress.

There was once, though, just once and on a mild day out on the Civil Service Sports Grounds out Chiswick way when I turned out for the Inland Revenue twelfth team that I showed a natural aptitude to be a natural goalscorer of the ‘poacher’ type. It should have been a hat-trick but the referee ruled one perfectly good goal off for offside. My first goal, but? It was Dalgishian in its guile and craft. Maybe it was all those years watching the great man as a Celtic player. I collected a ball passed to me at the edge of the penalty box while shielding it from a closing defender then just rounded him leaving him in my wake and angled it subtly past the advancing goalie and into the net. All in one movement I had created a football symphony: a soccer ballet in one act.

Meanwhile in Buenos Aries, a young man in a shantytown felt the air move. Had a butterfly fluttered its wings in west London.