With Claudio Caniggia at Dens Park and matches being screened live in Argentina, ambitious owners tried to seal the ultimate coup for the clubDiego Maradona’s road to Dundee began, in a way, in Luton. Ivano Bonetti had played in a European Cup final with Sampdoria in the early 90s but by the summer of 2000 he was perhaps best known to British football fans as the victim of Grimsby manager Brian Laws’ flying chicken wings at Kenilworth Road in 1996. The incident left him with a fractured cheekbone and a battered reputation – one that was little repaired by a two-game spell in the bizarro world that was Attilio Lombardo’s Crystal Palace two years later.He returned to Genoa and drifted...
From a debut remembered mainly by opponents to the rousing of Napoli and that goal against England, half a dozen moments that sum up El Diego“A lot of people claim they were there on 20 October 1976 when we played Talleres de Córdoba at home. The truth is, if everyone who says they were there for that match – my debut in the first team – had actually been there it would have had to be played at the Maracanã, not La Paternal” – Diego Maradona in El Diego, his autobiography Related: Diego Maradona stands alone in football’s glorious outlaw age | Barney Ronay Related: Maradona v Belgium, 1982 - a picture from the past Related: World Cup: 25 stunning...
Comparisons with Lionel Messi are futile – Maradona belonged to a wild, violent game unrecognisable to modern players, as his new book shows‘If it had been up to the Argentines, each of the players would have gone out there with a machine gun and killed Shilton, Stevens, Butcher, Fenwick, Sansom, Steven, Hodge, Reid, Hoddle, Beardsley and Lineker.” At first glance it seems fair to say Diego Maradona hasn’t really mellowed much. So begins one of the key chapters of his brilliant new – rehashed, repeated, elegantly toddled off – autobiography Touched By God, which is out in the UK next month.Certainly, the proposed machine-gunning of England’s entire satin-shorted first XI makes for an arresting mental image. Otherwise Maradona is conciliatory,...
It may not be a crisis yet but it will be if bogey team Chile defeat Argentina – and it will add to the many issues that are affecting the national gameWhatever happens on Thursday, Chile will haunt this generation of Argentinian players for ever. The two sides met in the 2015 Copa América final and the 2016 Copa América Centenario final and on both occasions Chile won on penalties after a 0-0 draw, extending the Argentinian trophy drought that stretches back to 1993. As Argentina face the possibility of failing to qualify for a World Cup for the first time since 1970, Chile, who have a knack of stopping them from playing, are probably the last team they want...