Dopey but not terribly funny

"I HAVE been, I am and I will always be a drug addict."

With that remarkable confession to the Argentinian review Gente last week, Diego Armando Maradona yet again put himself firmly at the centre of worldwide sports media attention, prompting either plaudits or fierce criticism for a forthright interview which was alternatively seen as either a charitable "act of courage" or a simple commercial transaction.

At the age of 35, Diego Armando still manages to make headlines and, these days, usually for his off-the-pitch activities. Meanwhile, Maradona the footballer lives on - he is due to play this year for his old club Boca Juniors.

If even half of what Maradona related in his interview proves accurate, then one can only conclude that the "funny old game" is a lot funnier than we ever thought. Asked where and how he had started taking drugs, Maradona replied: "The first time I took cocaine came in 1982 when I was just 22 years old and just arrived in Barcelona, Spain. I did it because I thought it was smart. I found drugs in the world of soccer because, just as anywhere else, there is and always has been drug abuse in soccer. I am not the only one. Lots of players were doing it."

Until now, it had always been believed that Maradona "got into" drugs late in his career, perhaps two or three years before his 1991 FIFA suspension for drug abuse after traces of cocaine had been found in a sample taken from him following a March 1991 first division game for his then club, Napoli.

Most commentators, including those Argentinians and Italians close to Maradona, argued that his decline into drugs had come only towards the end of an intensely stressful, high-profile career which had seen Maradona's unique talent become a marketable merchandise as early as the age of 15.

"When I arrived in Italy 10 years ago, the soccer community was full of stories about Maradona. Most of these were unprintable and centred on technicolour accounts of the player's busy nightlife. Maradona, one was told, was a womaniser. He was out on the town too often, he visited too many discos, he ate and drank in too many chic restaurants. In brief, he did not lead the early-to-bed, carefully regulated life suitable to a professional athlete.

It was never said, however, that Maradona was a dope fiend. Nor that he had become involved with cocaine as far back as Barcelona at the age of 22. Such a revelation now from Maradona has led sections of the Argentinian media to question his good faith, with the weekly Noticias claiming that he has been paid $4.8 million for his full collaboration in a state-sponsored anti-drugs campaign.

To make the campaign all the more effective, goes the cynical reasoning, Maradona was encouraged to exaggerate his story - just a little. Both Maradona and the president of Argentina, Carlos Menem, have angrily denied such speculation. Menem told reporters: "To help us in our anti-drugs campaign, Diego has done this as an act of goodwill and out of his love for children."

Perhaps there is indeed nothing exaggerated in the interview. Perhaps Maradona did first take cocaine as far back as 1982, but only became addicted towards the end of the 1980s at a time when his career with Napoli put him under maximum media and athletic pressure.

In this context, it was interesting to hear the opinion of Professor Antonio Dal Monte, director of the Italian Olympic Movement's Institute of Science and the man to whom Maradona turned for a specialised athletic preparation prior to both the 1986 and 1990 World Cups: "I swear that when Maradona came to me to undergo physical tests, I never got the slightest whiff or sense of cocaine ... Maradona knew how to do without it when it came to preparing himself for big matches. When he got really motivated, then he became almost perfect from the fitness viewpoint... My memory of Maradona is a good one, of a serious, respectful lad."

In his interview last week, Maradona repeated his oft-made assertion that he never used cocaine to enhance his athletic performance: "I took drugs during part of my soccer career, but I never took it as a playing stimulant ... If you try to take cocaine to play soccer, you'll find out that it doesn't help you play at all. Cocaine does not improve your performance levels ... My footballing talent had nothing to do with drugs."

Professor Dal Monte, for one, endorses this view, adding that, without drugs, Maradona would have been an even greater player. Now, there's a thought.

While even those unsympathetic to Maradona would probably agree that his remarkable talent owed nothing to chemical substances and everything to a gift from the sporting gods, his "confession" of last week does yet again prompt serious reflection on the professional soccer circus and all that goes with it.

Anyone who ever witnessed "Maradona Fever" in Naples or elsewhere can testify to the 57 varieties of con artist who tried to muscle their way into his winning act. Maradona recounts this aspect of his pressurised, superstar lifestyle in his interview: "I remember one Sunday when I was out with Claudia (Maradona's wife) and we were having a very nice meal. Somebody came over to talk to me and while I spoke to him, he took me by the hand, insisting that I take something from him ... Then he said, try it and if you like it, then I'm here in the corner ... It got so bad that there'd be times I'd go to the loo and there'd be 20 guys come in after me.

It would be nice to think that all of the above concerned only Maradona, the one black sheep of the soccer family. Not so. Argentinan Claudio Caniggia and Paul Merson of Arsenal are just two well-known players to have recently admitted regular consumption of cocaine.

Even more worrying is the case of former Italian Under-21 international Edoardo Bortolotti, who committed suicide this autumn by jumping off his apartment balcony. Bortolotti never managed to refloat a career that had been sidelined by a 1991, 15-month suspension from soccer for cocaine use. Not such a funny old game after all, Brian.