Little urchin ready to pick AC’s pockets

FABIO CANNAVARO was marked out for great things when he was 17 years old. He had already been working as a ball-boy and playing in the junior teams of Napoli for five years when he was invited to train with the senior squad.

That meant he would be on the same pitch as his hero Diego Maradona, and it was too good an opportunity to miss. The Argentinian never saw the tackle coming: Cannavaro sneaked in and whipped the ball from Maradona, who fell to the ground. As a Napoli coach yelled at the youngster for his impertinence at taking on the best player in the world, Maradona jogged past Cannavaro and said, "Good tackle."

"Maradona was my hero then and to tackle him gave me confidence for the future," Cannavaro remembered. "There were shrines and murals to Maradona outside my doorstep where I lived. It was weird seeing that and then seeing him in the flesh in training. It gave me goose-bumps, I'm not afraid to admit it. He was the greatest."