You'd be mad to miss out on crazy Maradona's World Cup adventure

By Brian Reade

Published 21:44 16/10/09

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I was amazed at the number of people in this country who wanted Argentina to miss World Cup qualification because they see Maradona as a despicable cheat.

At what point do we move on from a weak referee missing a hand-ball back in 1986?   I'm no Argie-lover but I do love the kind of football that glues you to a screen and makes you realise you're watching a team performance that will live in the memory for years.

Such was Argentina' 6-0 slaughter of Serbia in the 2006 World Cup, when Saviola, Messi, Riquelme, Crespo, Maxi Rodriguez and Co had us all drooling.

Next June will be a long month with plenty of games that leave you pining for root canal surgery. But there will be others in which players will do things with a ball that leave you open-gobbed, like a wide-eyed 10-year-old.

Players like Lionel Messi. The best in the world by a mile. Not wanting to watch Messi in a World Cup simply because he's an Argie, is like being invited to a concert involving the world's greatest composers and asking them to leave out Beethoven because he was a Kraut.

I'm looking forward to those shimmies in the light blue and white stripes already.

Safe in the knowledge that if we don't see any, we're guaranteed to see running along the touchline a mad midget in a big coat simulating sodomy with the fourth official and the Press.

Either way, Maradona's boys could be the highlight of the summer.