Standing among his players on the training pitch is the unmistakable figure of Diego Maradona.
He is shorter even than Lionel Messi and twice as wide as anyone else on the pitch.
To an untrained eye he looks like a fat kid in a tracksuit who’s won a competition. But then you see how, even now at touching 50, he commands the field. That charisma, that magnetism.
He conducts a shooting practice session in which Argentina’s players pass to him before first controlling and then smashing a ball that he has sent spinning into the air.
That they do it so well is a measure of how skilful these South Americans are compared to our own players.
When the session finishes Maradona heads towards the dressing-room area, only to see a discarded rugby ball.
Aware that the cameras are following him, he stops, digs his studs into the turf to create a small mound of earth and then does a passable impression of Jonny Wilkinson.
His conversion lands in a five-a-side net on the opposite side of the pitch. ‘Goal!’ cries Maradona, throwing his arms into the air.
source:dailymail.co.uk
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