Do or die for world soccer’s bad seed– Diego Maradona

Diego Maradona in 1977

World Cup soccer is in full swing again. The weekend launched a new round of qualifying games globally, and the highlight so far has been Brazil’s Saturday night on-the-road drubbing of Argentina 3-1. Argentina plays again tonight versus Paraguay, and with three games left in qualifying is in danger of missing the World Cup altogether, which hasn’t happened in over thirty years.

The team’s woes have focused worldwide attention on coach Diego Maradona, the on-and-off cocaine addict, friend of Fidel Castro, beneficiary of gastric bypass surgery, and former star number 10, who played brilliantly in Argentina’s last World Cup victory in 1986.

Maradona’s life has been a roller-coaster since then. During the 1994 World Cup he flunked a drug test and bowed out of the tournament. What followed was a slow descent into shoddy soccer and drug abuse, interspersed with recovery stints in Cuba and Argentine clinics. Earlier this decade he was on the brink of death in a Buenos Aires hospital, but the gastric bypass gave him a new lease on life.

He bounced back with a short-lived but successful TV talk show. And last year, his rehabilitation firm, he was named national team coach, an appointment he had coveted for years. But his “romantic” vision of a team devoted to offense and goal-scoring has proved a failure, as The Guardian reported.

There was never any doubt what kind of manager Maradona would be, yet no amount of tub-thumping was able to hide his side’s deficiencies against Brazil. His vision of the national team is a cavalier attacking team, ideally with three forwards, but the ambition of his gameplan simply played into the hands of Brazil, who waited patiently for the opportunity to counter attack.

If Argentina fails to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, it will certainly mean the end of Maradona’s reign as coach. If the team manages to scrape through, it will be interesting to see if Maradona finally revises his offense-oriented approach, which has garnered few results. Will he finally do something pragmatic in his life?