MEETING MARADONA

FROM high in the south terrace or Curva Sud of the Stadio San Paulo, Napoli’s ultras hang a bespoke banner at every game. Stitched carefully into the sky-blue fabric is the poetic epithet: “I have seen him, now I can die”. The tifosi need not say who they mean.

Diego Armando Maradona’s Argentina visit the Lokomotiv Stadium this evening for a friendly game with hosts Russia. The trip to Moscow is the latest step on what has been a rocky road for the former No 10 as international manager, having already overseen a humiliating 6-1 defeat to Bolivia and a damaging loss to Ecuador, as the South American giants stumble clumsily towards South Africa next summer. It all started however, like a Billy Connolly joke, in Glasgow.

Another banner in the Mezzogiorno explains that Naples – an industrial town which offers the world a grubby face scarred by organised crime and poverty – has but three beautiful features: the bay, the Vesuvius and Maradona. Glasgow doesn’t have any volcanoes or a beautiful harbour. But for one night, it had Diego.