Maradona still centre of attention

"What an a------- you are! How can you put your leg there where it can get run over, man?"

In charge: Diego Maradona, right, imparts some words of wisdom to Javier Mascherano

Diego Maradona's already fabled rebuke to the television cameraman whose foot he had just run over in his car en route to the Argentine training complex in Buenos Aires – now the poor fellow knows why he works for Channel 13 – could just as well stand as his World Cup mission declaration: 'Don't stand in my way; El Diez is coming through.'

But what if people don't believe in you, Diego? "Well, they can suck on it and keeping sucking," as he once retorted so charmingly. No explanations, no arguments, no justification; just gaze at your crushed toe, grin and bear it.

As he puffs away on his cigar here like his hero Fidel Castro, you just know Argentina have to do it Maradona's own autocratic, idiosyncratic way at this World Cup because, from the moment the nation's demigod said he wanted to run the nation's team, even though everyone could see that putting an absolute beginner of a coach in charge was an idea fraught with peril, he could not be denied.

Maradona wanted the job so badly that the last drama to befall him before arriving here in South Africa even centred on whether he actually manoeuvred to oust his predecessor, Alfio Basile, from his post.

"As a person, Maradona is garbage – good for nothing, no dignity," Jorge Robolzi, his chief accuser and one of Basile's old assistants, protested. Maradona simply batted away the accusations as absurd.

While Argentina prepare for their opener against Nigeria here at Johannesburg's Ellis Park, a nation has come to accept that, for better or worse, the epic narrative of Maradona's career meant he would lead his country into battle once more.

But they are still not sure whether their general is a madman or a genius. A year ago, they thought he was Douglas Haig, presiding over chaos; suddenly, they are prepared to convince themselves he is their Montgomery, a bearded wisdom having descended at the appointed hour.

"He changed the way he expresses himself, calmer, more thoughtful, more cautious," Ruben Capria, one of Argentina's army of former players turned pundits, argues.

Not that the critics agree: Ossie Ardiles was still taking his old team-mate to task over his "stupid" and "irresponsible" decision making.

It was in June 1994 that he walked off the pitch against Nigeria at Boston's Foxboro Stadium pumped with five soon-to-be detected performance enhancing drugs; this Saturday, he will walk to the dugout, still the absolute centre of attention, still inhabiting the bizarre place that is Planet Maradona.

Maradona's qualifying campaign invited utter ridicule, with its muddle-headed employment of 107 different players. Jorge Olguin, a World Cup winner from 1978, had noted damningly then: "Maradona doesn't have a clear idea about what he wants. I don't know how Maradona wants to play."

Nobody did. And nobody can be sure now, even if the fond belief is that something has changed for the better in the Argentina camp, even the unthinkable prospect that Maradona is actually doing some listening as well as commanding, maybe even for once heeding a word or two from his 71-year-old assistant Carlos Bilardo, coach of the 1986 champions.

A system has emerged this year; not universally admired, maybe as flawed as Ardiles suggests, but at least a coherent, consistent plan, built on the absolute unadventurous security of four centre-backs – Nicolas Otamendi, Martin Demichelis, Walter Samuel and Gabriel Heinze – patrolled by a midfield sentry, Javier Mascherano.

Juan Sebastian Veron acts as a deep-lying string puller with two busy wide men, Newcastle's Jonás Gutiérrez and the abundantly gifted Angel Di Maria, serving two strikers, Gonzalo Higuain and the free-roaming Lionel Messi.

This side, which beat Germany, Maradona vowed, would be his starting line-up against Nigeria, the great individualist building a team essentially on conservatism, with almost criminal attacking riches like Carlos Tévez, Sergio Aguero, Diego Milito and Javier Pastore stuck on the bench.

Yet, being Maradona, wouldn't it now be typical that he throws this out for the much more adventurous 3-4-3 he has apparently been practising behind closed doors with an attacking trident of Messi, Tévez and Higuain?

Whatever the system, Messi holds the key. Maradona looks at the Barcelona sorcerer and sees the story of 1986 replaying itself, the tale of supposed no-hopers transformed by one player of genius. But having looked so unstoppable for club, why has he looked lost for country? A sign of Maradona's tactical cluelessness?

Maradona responds that he had never previously had a chance to talk at length with Messi "because he is more difficult to get hold of than Obama".

However, after a two-hour meeting in Madrid in April when Messi was able to detail what he believed his best role was for Argentina, the headstrong one took it on board.

Perhaps one image still seduces Maradona's compatriots. That of a little big man sliding across the rain-sodden Monumental pitch in Buenos Aires last October like a beached porpoise, celebrating a 92nd minute "miracle" goal from Martin Palermo to down Peru and rescue Argentina's qualification.

Oddly, this became Argentina's new image of hope; the sheer unbridled, reckless joy of a man-child, still crazy after all those 49 years.

The second commandment of the Rosario-based Maradonian Church, whose 120,000 followers still worship at his left foot in this year of their god 49AD (After Diego), is "Thou shalt love football over all things".

Forty million sceptical Argentines could still give him an argument about tactics but they still find this trait fairly irresistible.

"You have to put all your heart into winning the World Cup," he declared on a TV show before flying out to South Africa. "You've got to give your life."

For all his flaws, a country fancies Maradona's saving grace is that he still honestly would.